


Breaking Through

by LapfulofMisha



Category: Supernatural, destiel - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Earth, Angel/Cas has wings, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean has weird (but cool) powers, Dean/Cas Big Bang 2017, Graphic Descriptions of Seizures, I mean slooooooooow, I reinvented the nature of the Universe for reasons, M/M, Mental Link, Minor Character Death, Slow Build, Touch-Starved, Wing Kink, admit it you're curious, alternating pov, blow jobs for everyone, dcbb2017, feather kink, other worlds/realms, plot heavy, sex on a cloud, trust me you won't care, weird shit happens with popcorn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:15:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 38,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12786771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LapfulofMisha/pseuds/LapfulofMisha
Summary: Dean is driving home when he has the strangest experience of his life (and that's saying something). When Castiel appears to explain what happened, Dean finds out he has a role to fulfill in a dangerous mission - and all of reality is at stake. Dean is fascinated by the mysterious angel, who is guiding him in using his newly-awakened power. But whenever Cas enters Dean's realm, he must remain behind a shield that covers his body - so even though Dean and Cas are falling hard for each other, they know they can never touch, can never have the kind of intimacy they so desperately crave.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story actually began as a comic book script I did for a Creative Writing class! I rewrote and edited it at least 400 zillion times to become this story. Thanks to my amazingly patient beta [ CastielsGracex ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CastielsGracex)  
> Also check out the amazing art Anjika_Flan did for this story [ Art Masterpost ](http://anjika-flan.tumblr.com/post/167992038391/breaking-through-art-masterpost)  
> If there's anything that doesn't make sense, please let me know and I'll explain . . . or fix it if it's wrong.

Dean stares out the windshield as he guides his car down the long, straight road ahead. Normally, driving home is a source of relaxation. Blaring his classic rock music in the Impala and singing at the top of his lungs with no one around to judge (or roll their eyes, and not naming names, but really, Sammy?) is downright therapeutic. These days, however, the world seems to be going to shit, and even Led Zeppelin can’t take his mind entirely off the constant tension and uneasiness he’s been feeling.

On each side of the highway, dried up golden cornstalks stand wearily in the fields. Trees, whose leaves are beginning to turn red and orange, occasionally dot the landscape. The cloudless sky is a glaring cerulean blue, and the warm air is (finally) starting to feel the first hints of autumn chill.

The seasons have gone crazy, he thinks worriedly. Summer weather has been ongoing for at least ten months. Crops are failing because of the excessive heat, and growing unrest is slowly spreading as scientists try to understand why Mother Nature has apparently decided to fuck off and leave the building.

Even more disturbing is the random, inexplicable noise no one is officially talking about. Dean hears thunder when there are no storms (or maybe it’s sonic booms?). He knows from the whispers of his customers that he’s not the only one noticing this weird shit. The news stations won’t mention it. Dean wonders if they are perhaps under orders from the government to keep quiet.

The first time Dean witnessed it himself, he was driving to a hunt. He originally mistook the noises for the bass in his music. But the noise continued through the silence between songs, and when he pulled off the road to listen, he still heard its ominous, roaring booms. At the time, he assumed it must be associated in some way with the witch he was hunting. However, after the witch’s violent and brutal death (Dean hates witches), the sounds remained. He never spoke of it to anyone, not even Sam.

Two months afterward, Dean met up with Bobby and Rufus. They’d caught word of a government conspiracy, and while neither of them were exactly conspiracy theorists, this tip attracted their attention, and they wanted to meet with Dean in person to discuss it.

According to Bobby, current rumors asserted the mysterious booms and thuds were coming from some kind of new anti-terrorist weapon. While many speculated on its purpose, the general consensus was that something went wrong in its development, which was why the government wouldn’t acknowledge it, not even to attempt to misdirect the public.

“ _Everything_ that’s going to shit in the world can’t be caused by global warming, no matter what the scientists say,” Rufus said.

“Maybe it’s an alien invasion?” Bobby deadpanned. Dean wasn’t sure if he was serious or not, but somehow, he already knew it was something much worse. He’d been hearing the noises more frequently, and every time, he felt a chill, felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. And hunters’ instincts tend to be heightened, and rarely wrong.

Shaking his head and returning his attention to the road, Dean decides he can’t solve all the world’s problems, at least not tonight. He decides to focus instead on enjoying the drive.

Dean loves his day job. He’s worked on cars since he was old enough to hold a wrench, and working as a mechanic comes as naturally to him as breathing. But his boss recently died in a freak accident, and the shop’s new owner is a dick. Dean finds himself anxious to leave when six o’clock rolls around.

The drive from the shithole town he works in to the shithole town he lives in takes about forty-five minutes. He makes the commute between four to six days a week, depending on how busy the shop is. The newly named Honest Zach’s Repair Shop is already (ridiculously) prosperous, since its dickbag owner treats his customers like gold (to their face, anyway) despite treating his employees like dirt.

Zach is also successful because of his incredible ability to fuck over his patrons by telling them their vehicles need repairs they don’t actually need, and getting them to believe it. Dean fights him every time, and discreetly tells the customers they don’t require the service Zach tells them they need. They have such faith in Zach, however, that they insist Dean complete the work. It’s almost eerie, like the man entrances them or something.

Today was the final straw.

Zach told Dean to inform a harried looking woman with several small children that her Cavalier needed to have the ball joint replaced.

“Are you insane?” Dean growled. Zach raised an eyebrow and was about to respond, but Dean cut him off. “She’s here for an oil change. There is nothing wrong with that car.”

“Yes,” he’d agreed with a predatory smile that displayed more teeth than any human being could possibly have. “But she doesn’t know that.”

At that point, Dean instructed Zach to stick a tire iron up his ass, and recommended the use of motor oil for lube. Dean has imagined telling off Zach almost since they first met, but he was still a little shocked when he heard the words come out of his mouth.

Zach, in response, told Dean to go to hell, and gave him honest-to-god directions on how to get there. (Dean suspected they were accurate, since in all likelihood Zach was from hell himself.) But then Zach apparently remembered the shop’s other full-time mechanic was about to have knee surgery, requiring him to take six weeks off. He couldn’t fire Dean and keep his shop running. Instead, he chose to get into Dean’s personal space (coffee breath, gross) and yell at him about things that didn’t even make _sense_. According to Zach, Dean was not only responsible for the loss of easy revenue for refusing to do the ball joint job, but also for Zach’s lack of a sex life ( _eew_ ), the general crappiness of the economy, and the fact that North Korea has some scary fucking weapons.

Dean makes a mental note to add “nutjob” to “dickbag” when describing his new boss to others.

A good twenty minutes into his drive, Dean’s tension begins to ease. In addition to his mechanic job, he picks up three or four night shifts a week bartending at the Roadhouse. He doesn’t need the money, although he makes excellent tips. He works there to keep his boredom and loneliness away: ever since Sammy left for Stanford (and thank God his little brother got out of this town), he’s been spending way too much time alone.

Working at the bar has helped to alleviate his loneliness. A lot of people pass through, and he’s a magnet for hookups. Girls flock to him, but occasionally guys are interested too, and hey, he’s up for anything. Nothing wrong with a little variety.

When he’s not working at the bar or the Asshole’s shop, he hunts monsters. With Sam no longer around to watch his back, Bobby only gives him jobs that are simple salt and burns. He misses the adrenaline rush of taking down entire vampire nests and performing mass exorcisms, but at least he stays in shape this way.

Relief floods through him as he remembers that he’s not bartending (or hunting) tonight, though. It’s rare for him to have a Friday night off, and he intends to make the most of it. Whiskey and leftover pizza await him, and he plans to drink until he forgets about his asshole boss, and get caught up on Game of Thrones.

Of course, peace and relaxation are fleeting.

Without warning, the sound of thunder fills the air, louder than it’s ever been. Dean feels his muscles seize up. He feels like his body has filled with blocks of granite. Electric currents suddenly surge from his brain to his feet. Lights flash before his eyes like fireballs filling the sky. With horror he wonders if he’s turning to stone. Maybe he got hexed on that last witch job.

As quickly as the feeling starts, it passes. He grips the steering wheel and frantically swerves back into his own lane on the (thankfully deserted) road.

_What the fuck was that?_

Fighting down panic, he wonders if he just had a seizure, although he’s never had one before in his life.

He notices the air up ahead over the field off to his right start to shimmer, like a mirage on the road, or a really intense heat wave. He rubs his eyes.

 _It’s an after effect of the seizure,_ he thinks. _And worse, what if it happens again?_ _I need to get home. Now._

He glances hesitantly toward the area over the field again, hoping he was imagining the metallic, shiny and wavering air. No such luck. Of course not.

_What the hell is happeni-_

Before he can finish the thought, the thunder turns into a sizzling, hollow, sucking sound which drowns out _Whole Lotta Love_. The shimmering in the air intensifies. Dean, reluctantly fascinated, slows down the Impala, because apparently this is actually happening. He stares at the rippling, churning mass as he eases the car onto the shoulder of the road. He glances up and down the highway; no other cars are visible. Of course not. No one else is around to confirm that he isn’t hallucinating; that he is, in fact, not crazy.

Dean freezes again as a second, stronger electric current ripples through his body. He slumps forward and nearly blacks out from the intensity of the muscle pain and searing lights in his eyes. If he hadn’t pulled over, he definitely would’ve become personally acquainted with the ditch. A few seconds later, the flares before his eyes and muscle spasms stop completely, as if they’d never happened.

A jagged hole appears within the shimmering mess of air over the field.

Dean shuts off the Impala and tentatively climbs out. He runs a hand over his face. He’s a little nauseated from the pain, but his stomach seems unimportant considering what’s happening in the field in front of him. His hunter’s instinct kicks in, and he mentally runs through anything supernatural that he’s ever dealt with that could possibly come close to explaining this. He’s fairly certain even Bobby will be stumped by this one. Assuming he lives long enough to tell him about it.

He estimates the bottom edge of the hole is hovering about six or seven feet off the ground. As he walks into the field, stalks of corn crunch underneath his feet. His body is full of static charge, he notices, because his hair is sticking straight up and his clothes are clinging to his body. It seems like a strange after effect of a seizure, and since he’s never had one before, he wonders if he should be (even more) alarmed.

The floating hole in the air enlarges as he gets closer. A sparking, rotating border in the shape of an oval is surrounded by jagged edges. He peers up at the hole and realizes it’s actually sort of a doorway that leads down a tunnel. _A tunnel._ Floating in the air. Standing up on the balls of his feet, he tries to see where it might lead, assuming it’s not just an optical illusion or the product of a sudden onset of psychosis.

Dean’s eyes suddenly widen. He barely has time to yell “holy crap!” and drop to the ground before two people fly out of the hole, and how the fuck could this possibly get any weirder? Game of Thrones is definitely off the table for tonight, having gone the way of the optical illusion/possible psychosis theory.

Their bodies collide with the ground with a sickening thud.

The hole closes and disappears, and Dean turns to the two beings on the ground behind him. Did the poor bastards even survive? Two dead bodies in a field might be difficult to explain, should anyone drive by.

He cautiously kneels next to them. They seem human enough. Dean estimates they’re in their twenties. They aren’t moving, so Dean gently rolls over the closest one, supporting his neck in case he’s injured. He’s breathing, and doesn’t appear to be hurt beyond the scratches and rapidly forming bruises one gets from _falling out of the sky and landing in a cornfield._ Dean scoots over to check the other person. She’s in roughly the same condition; breathing, but unconscious.

Dean reaches for his phone. No service, of course not. Apparently giant holes in the air disrupt cell phone signals.

He looks down at the people on the ground, and wonders if they are truly human. They have strange clothes. They are both wearing dark brown robes and beige pantsuits. Both have short, black hair, cut in the exact same cropped style. Dean is a little wary, especially since his nine-millimeter is in the car, since he generally doesn’t arm himself at his mechanic job (mainly for fear of losing his temper and shooting the Asshole in the leg).

Dean reaches down and carefully shakes the man’s shoulder, trying to wake him up. There’s no response.

Dean sighs. He obviously can’t leave them here. He gently picks the girl up off the ground and carries her to the Impala. He slides her into the back seat. Being jostled around causes her to briefly regain consciousness.

“I am where?” she asks.

Dean blinks and clears his throat.

“What’s your name?” he asks gruffly.

“Name? Abarrelle. I am where?”

“You, uh, landed in a field. I need to go get your friend. I’ll be right back.” He starts to walk off, but turns around to look at her. “Don’t wander off!” he tells her, although he’s not entirely sure why he says it. Confusion contorts her face, but she nods and lays down on the backseat.

Dean wrangles the guy into the front seat of the Impala. Unconsciousness has now swallowed both the new visitors. Or maybe they’re just sleeping. (Falling through the sky is probably exhausting).

First he has to deal with his Asshole boss, and now this? _What the fuck is my life?_ he wonders dismally.

Dean looks back over the field, but no traces of either the shimmery air or the hole in the sky remain. He decides to take his two passengers to the hospital. They could have internal injuries or other medical problems that he can’t detect. He’ll tell the emergency room doctors that he found them wandering along the side of the road and they were out of it, so he picked them up.

Maybe he can salvage his Friday night after all.

*****

A few miles down the road, his front seat passenger wakes up.

“I am where?” he asks.

 _Who the hell taught these people grammar?_ Dean wonders. _And how the hell do I answer his question?_

Dean gives him a sideways glance. “You’re, uh, on Earth.”

He doesn’t see the guy roll his eyes.

“We’re driving to the town I live in,” Dean continues. “And I’m gonna take you both to a doctor to get checked out.”

“NO!” comes the sharp reply. The ear-shatteringly loud voice startles Dean, and he almost drives off the road.

“What the hell is your problem?” he snaps.

“Please, no Doc-Uht-Or. We, safe place we need, to think, to rest, to understand.”

Dean is about to protest, but he decides maybe taking them home and finding out what’s going on would be a better course of action than dumping them off at the hospital. They don’t seem to be in any physical distress. Drawing attention to them seems to be maybe not such a good idea.

He’s not entirely sure why he cares.

“You got it, Yoda,” Dean mumbles.

He hears Abarrelle stirring in the back seat.

He admits to himself that he’s curious. Maybe it’s just his nature, but he feels strangely protective over these people. Normally, the strangers that come to his house are there for one thing only- and it’s certainly not to _think_ , or _rest_ , or _understand_.

The guy next to him is silently staring out the window, not saying a word.

He quickly sorts through what he’s observed. English must not be their first language, since they put the words of their sentences in the wrong order. Or, maybe they just speak English differently where they’re from, although Dean can’t think of anyplace that speaks English _that_ differently. Also, their clothes look like uniforms of some sort. They don’t seem terribly surprised to be in the situation they are in, so maybe this is something they’ve done before?

“What the hell just happened, anyway?” he finally demands. “Who the hell are you people?”

The guy stares at Dean for a long time before he speaks through clenched teeth. “To our home we must return. We are Maundea. How have you drawn us to this place?”

“You tell me!” Dean tightens his grip on the steering wheel. His fingers are turning white from the effort. The speedometer shows he’s driving 87 miles an hour, and he eases off the accelerator. He glances at the rearview mirror. No cops.

“Do you normally get sucked through holes in the air? Is this like, a common thing you do?” He can’t quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice (it’s been a long day).

Abarrelle sits up and situates herself in the middle of the backseat. She combs her fingers through the short hair before announcing, “We are Maundea.”

“Yeah. I got that the first time.”

“We were in the Worship Hall, and with the Lesser gods were communing,” she continues, as if she didn’t hear Dean. “A brilliant light, the altar was covered with it. The god Curtee, us he warned that Space was crumbling. In front of us, a portal appeared. We were compelled into it, to step through.”

Dean says nothing. He wishes Sam was here. Sam would know what to say to these people, who are obviously insane.

But he’s not here, so Dean asks the first question he thinks of.

“What country are you from?”

Abarrelle looks at her companion, and Dean realizes he doesn’t know the guy’s name.

“What is - a country?” the guy asks.

Dean sighs. Maybe he should have left these people in the field, after all.

“Okay, let’s try this one. What’s your name?” Dean asks.

“Vaudlar. We - from a . . . _country_ , no. We are from Ghar Earthwalker, our realm.”

Before Dean has a chance to process this information, a foreign thought enters his mind and sears to the forefront of his thoughts. He suddenly _knows_ that these people are indeed from Earth. They are simply from a different version of Earth, and they need to get home. He isn’t quite sure why he suddenly thinks this, but it feels right.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean pulls into his double garage, which is almost as large as the rest of his house. (He spends most of his time in the garage anyway.) He leads the two strangers inside, through the small living room and into the dining room. Aside from a t-shirt casually tossed onto the couch and some magazines in a pile on the hardwood floor, everything is meticulous. The two rooms are separated only by a small island, where Dean usually eats his meals, so the space is open and airy. Vaudlar and Abarrelle’s expressions never change, but Dean knows they are taking in every detail of what they see.

“Look,” he tells them uneasily, “why don’t you have a seat and I’ll get us something to drink.”

They ignore the table and chairs and seat themselves gracefully on the floor in a single fluid motion. Dean opens his mouth to say something but shakes his head and goes into the kitchen instead. He grabs a bottle and three whiskey glasses and almost drops them when he hears a loud boom. He walks back to the dining room, just in time to see the suddenly wavering air in front of his couch tear open. A frayed-edged, circular opening, similar to the one in the field, appears _in his living room_.

“Aw, come on!” he groans. “Seriously?”

Dean tenses as the hairs on his arms stand up. He braces for the muscle spasm-seizures that coincided with the last hole opening up, but they don’t happen, and thank God for small favors. Instead, goosebumps spread across every part of his body. At the same time, a calm, serene whisper soothes his mind. The feeling is not unlike the one he felt when the thought appeared in his head earlier; the one that clued him in on the alternate-earth-origin of Abarrelle and Vaudlar. This opening may look the same as the one he saw earlier, but it’s definitely something else.

The buzzing, sizzling sound it has begun to make becomes almost unbearably loud. Out of the hole in space that shouldn’t be there walks the most beautiful man Dean has ever seen.

An energy field clings to him; it looks like a soap bubble; clear but with gentle pale colors surging through it. Dean notices two dark shapes looming behind the guy and realizes they’re wings.

Glacier blue eyes take in the scene in Dean’s dining room. An uncombed mess of dark hair matches the black ruffled feathers Dean can now see on his wings. The guy focuses on Dean, and Dean’s knees turn instantly to jelly. Dean physically feels the unnaturally beautiful eyes sizing him up, and he wishes he could have showered and changed clothes before the unannounced inspection.

“I assume you are the Catalyst,” the guy says to Dean. His voice is low and gravelly and sexy and _holy shit._

“I’m the _what_?” Dean manages to say.

The two people seated on the floor look on with interest, but remain silent.

The winged man, who Dean is already referring to in his mind as Wings, _because wings,_ sighs in exasperation. “You normally exist in this realm, correct?”

“If you mean _Earth_ , where apparently holes now randomly spit people out of thin air, then yeah.”

Wings seems utterly unmoved by the incredulity of this conversation. “Then you are the Catalyst,” he says with obviously strained patience. “It is you who attracts this side of the Aberrations and ensures the Leakers are able to be returned safely after they are pulled between realms.”

Dean stares at him. “Oh, yeah, well obviously,” he says sarcastically.

The man unconsciously flicks his wings, and his pastel-streaked energy shield pulses. “This is not the time for sarcasm. You must tell me, did anything exit the pathway other than the two Leakers?” He gestures urgently toward the two people sitting on his floor.

“You call them _Leakers?_ Seriously?”

“Of course,” he says defensively. “They leak between realms. Answer my question.”

Dean blinks slowly. “I think if anyone else had fallen from the sky, I would have noticed,” he replies flatly.

Wings rolls his eyes and scowls at him. “Your powers of observation are unrivaled, without question,” he says tonelessly. “Now _think_. You must remember if there was any debris.”

Dean sighs. The guy may be hot, but he’s kind of a dick. On the other hand, he’s a dick with _wings_ and apparently _super powers_ because he can materialize out of thin air.

“I’ve lost my mind, haven’t I?” Dean asks suddenly. “This is what insanity is. I’m somewhere in a padded room, right now. Are there sexy orderlies? At least let there be sexy orderlies.” He knows he’s babbling, but he can’t stop.

Wings cuts him off impatiently. “You are not insane. Catalysts aren’t aware of their abilities until they are faced with their first Aberration. And there’s – there’s never been a Catalyst quite like you.”

Dean ignores the quiver in Wings’ voice and snaps, “If that was meant to be reassuring, it wasn’t, and if it was meant to explain anything, it didn’t.”

The man tilts his head and _god_ those are the bluest eyes Dean’s ever seen. Sighing, he replays the events of the afternoon, then stubbornly crosses his arms and glares at Wings. He wonders if the dick has any idea how incredibly hot he is. It’s really, really unfair.

“I can assure you, nothing else came through the tunnel.” As an afterthought, he adds, “at least not anything visible to a human.”

Satisfied, Wings abruptly turns his attention to the two people seated on the floor. “You must come with me. I will return you to your realm and seal the breech.”

They rise without hesitation, and he directs them around the iridescent energy field that surrounds him. Dean stares. Apparently, these people have no problem whatsoever with falling out of a hole in the sky and then casually walking back into one. They step through and are gently drawn inside, guided slowly by an invisible force. Wings stares after them, tilting his head and looking down the tunnel they disappeared into. He waves his hands as if manipulating invisible magical forces, and Dean wonders if he’s somehow stepped into a low budget science fiction movie.

Once he’s satisfied that they are safe, Wings returns his attention to Dean. “We need to talk.”

*****

Dean realizes he’s still holding the whiskey and the glasses. He sets them down on the table, then pours himself a shot and gulps it down. This is not something anyone should have to deal with while sober. He slams the glass down on the table and turns back to the (ridiculously hot) guy in his living room.

Looking at him through his energy shield is sort of like trying to see dirty dishes through a sink full of sudsy dishwater. At times he can almost see him clearly; at other times the shield wavers and the metallic pinks and greens and yellows blur him out.

“So uh, instead of lurking there in that freaking tunnel or whatever, why don’t you come in and sit down? And tell me who the hell you are and what’s going on?”

Wings narrows his eyes and studies Dean’s face as if he is a virus under a microscope. At least he speaks in complete, coherent sentences, Dean reflects.

“My name is Castiel. I cannot “come in”. He says this slowly, as if Dean has only recently learned to understand words. “If I don’t remain in the shield while in your realm, my presence will contaminate your world, and your world could . . . affect my body.”

You’re affecting my body right now, Dean thinks. Even if you are a dick.

Oh god, this is so not the time.

Dean clears his throat. “So, why are you here? You wanna explain to me why there are holes in the air? Oh, and uh, holes _in my fucking living room_?”

Castiel looks him over again, like he’s sizing him up, evaluating him, and this shit is getting unnerving. “All of reality is breaking.”

Dean’s expression doesn’t change. Because obviously, this is all just an alcohol-induced dream. It has to be. Reality can’t _break_.

Castiel continues, “I am from a group of angels who are in charge of the Lynk.”

“Angels? You mean like, _angel_ angels?”

“I am an Angel of the Lord. Are there other kinds of angels?”

The man keeps a perfectly straight face, and Dean can’t tell if he’s being serious or being a smartass. Worse yet, Dean realizes he’s just committed a whole new level of blasphemy by wanting to get into the pants of an _Angel of the Lord_.

“Right. So uh, what’s with the getup? Do all angels wear suits and trenchcoats?”

Castiel looks down at himself uncertainly. “Is this – not what people in this realm wear? I was told coming here without clothing would be inappropriate.”

Dean needs a change of subject _right now_ and urges Castiel to continue his explanation. “What is this Lynk thing you’re in charge of? Is it part of Heaven?”

“It is more of - an extension of Heaven, you could say. The Lynk is a giant sphere, approximately half the size of your Earth’s moon. Every plane of existence, every _realm_ , begins within it and flows outward from it. Each of these realms connects to other realms, although they do not cross into each other. They are separated by Barriers.”

Dean decides he needs another shot of whiskey. He can’t remember ever reading about this shit in the Bible. Or seeing it on the Discovery Channel, either. He feels a weird sense of betrayal. “What is a realm, exactly?”

Castiel stares at Dean like he’s looking into his soul and does he _really not know how distracting that is?_

“Your world, your perception of everything around you, your experiences; your earth, your planets, and everything you consider to be part of your Universe; this is your realm. Other versions of the Universe, _other realms_ , exist simultaneously on different planes, in different kinds of space, facilitated by the Lynk.”

Pressure is building behind Dean’s head. He sinks into one of the kitchen chairs. Wings (Castiel _,_ he corrects himself), follows him with his eyes.

“How many versions of these realms, or whatever, exist?”

Castiel sighs. “We don’t know how many realms there are. Some come into existence and die out faster than we can count them.”

Dean blinks. “Dude, what the hell?”

“Not all realms exist for as long as yours has, Dean. Some are here and gone in an instant, because the physics that governs them fails. Others, like yours, last billions of years.”

Dean doesn’t remember telling Castiel his name.

“You are what we call a Catalyst,” Castiel continues. “You have an energy within you that attracts the destination side of the pathways and pulls them through the Barrier and into your realm.”

“An energy,” he repeats. “You mean - I attract the holes in the air? Like a magnet?” Dean stares at him blankly.

“Yes. You can think of a pathway as a bridge that starts in one realm and crosses into another. Only instead of crossing a river, pathways cross through the Barriers. They latch on to a Catalyst’s energy and use it to punch through into the realm that is their destination.

“The hole I am standing in front of right now is at the end of a pathway that I created. The pathways that form spontaneously, that we don’t create, are called Aberrations. For reasons unknown to us, all current Aberrations are causing people to move to your planet in your realm. As you are the only Catalyst currently _on_ this planet in this realm, the pathways are attracted to your energy.”

Castiel blinks, but otherwise is completely still.

Dean considers this for a minute. Fuck his life that all of this actually kind of makes sense.

“So this is what you do? Barge into people’s houses and explain this science fiction crap to them?”

Castiel tilts his head. Through his energy shield Dean can see his wings puff up and his eyes narrow. “Am I to understand you don’t believe what I have told you?”

“Nah, I believe you.” Dean can’t help but add, “But dude? You are seriously way too uptight. Really, man. You need to get laid.”

Castiel looks uncomfortable and reaches up to rub his neck before apparently remembering the form-fitting energy shield prevents him from actually touching himself. Awkwardly he lowers his hand and resumes talking. “Your energy, your ability to guide the Aberrations, allows you to rescue the people who are transported here. I will then return them to their own homes and repair the tear in the Barrier caused by their arrival in your realm. Your job is to simply be present when they are in range; your energy will do the rest. Help them when they get here, Dean. Their safety is vital to the survival of all realms. Without a Catalyst, the Aberrations aren’t able to find your realm to open up into. They spit their contents out into the void within the Barrier, and they are lost.”

Dean takes a minute to let this sink in. “By ‘contents’ you mean people.”

“Yes.”

Castiel’s clear blue eyes are staring solemnly at Dean.

With sudden dawning horror, Dean says, “You mean to tell me, people are getting sucked from their own - _realm_ \- and spit out into this void, this nothingness, and I’m assuming, sudden death?”

“We don’t believe they die. We think they go into a kind of stasis.” He pauses before saying softly, “the first Aberrations appeared so quickly, we were unable to intercede.”

Dean’s eyes widen as he realizes what this means.

“People are floating around in this Barrier-void thing _right now_?”

Castiel’s eyes flicker to the ground, and Dean notices his wings droop slightly. “Yes. This is why, when I give you an order to go, you must go as quickly as possible, so the pathways make it into this realm and the Leakers aren’t lost. Your energy attracts them to your area, yes; but they won’t always be close to you, and you will have to go to them to guide them through.”

Dean is not a person who panics. Not ever.

But there’s a first time for everything.

“How many of these things are we talking about?” he asks a little desperately.

“We don’t know.”

“Then how the hell do you know when they’re gonna show up? How are you gonna warn me?”

“While the Aberrations pop up randomly, the Lynk gives us some warning. Now that we - have met, I will be able to find you more easily.” Castiel looks annoyed, apparently by the inconvenience of having had to guess Dean’s location. He must be fairly good at it, though, since he appeared directly in Dean’s living room.

“So basically you expect me to just abandon everything I know and follow you off into the sunset? My jobs? Hunting? My life?”

“What life?” Castiel hisses, his demeanor suddenly changing into something eerily like desperation. “You live alone in a desolate town and work for someone you hate. You have no friends and your brother is gone. You feel an intense sense of loss, of loneliness. Everything that matters to you in the world can fit into the trunk of your car. There is nothing for you here. There is no reason for you to refuse this responsibility!”

Dean notes fear mixed in with the angel’s angry expression (not unexpected, he supposes, all things considered).

The worst part of Castiel’s outburst, he thinks, is that it’s all true.

“I see you’ve done your homework,” Dean says acidly, “and I don’t even want to know how you know how I feel, Jesus _Christ_. But this _responsibility_ is your problem, not mine. Go screw yourself. I’m not doing it.”

Suddenly Castiel turns and looks back down the pathway. He steps backward with a look of horror before he doubles over and groans in pain. “You must go to the old mill near North Fork, Nebraska in two days and wait for the next Aberration,” he says in a strangled voice. “Please, Dean.”

“ _What?_ I just told you -”

“Get there early. Before sunrise.”

“That’s like, five hours from here! I thought this shit came to _me_! I want no part of this! Find someone else.”

Castiel whimpers and falls to his knees, his eyes dropping to the floor. “GO, Dean. We’ll talk soon.”

Castiel is sucked backwards through his pathway, and the hole disappears. For a second, Dean feels a strange tingling in the back of his mind, and it sweeps through his body, leaving him shivering. The feeling passes.

Dean’s living room is back to the exact state it was in when he left home this morning. There is no evidence that anything unusual happened at all.

  



	3. Chapter 3

Dean stands gaping at the empty space where Castiel appeared, then disappeared. Son. Of. A. Bitch. The guy drops this kind of a bomb on him, then disappears? Admittedly, he didn’t appear to leave voluntarily. It looked as if someone was attacking him, but Dean didn’t see an attacker.

A short while later, Dean sits on the couch holding a slice of cold pizza in one hand and his phone in the other. If this were a hunt, he would call Bobby for advice. Instead he puts the phone down. He’s not sure of the reason, but involving anyone else at this point feels wrong. For the first time in his life, he has absolutely no idea what to do.

Dean spent most of his life raising his brother, and quickly became accustomed to being in charge, to having a plan of action, to being the person others turned to when _they_ had a crisis. Then out of nowhere, some guy pops up in his living room, _literally_ , and orders Dean to drive to a town in the middle of nowhere to a deserted _mill_? And for what? To rescue more random people from another hole in the world? Oh, no, make that _reality_.

Dean sighs. Reality is breaking, Castiel said. What does that even mean?

Although it’s almost ten thirty at night, the silence shatters as his phone starts blaring Taylor Swift. (Sam thinks it’s funny to mess with Dean’s ringtones. The joke’s on him, though, because secretly, Dean _really_ likes this song.)

“What’s up, bitch?” Dean says, trying to sound normal.

He can almost hear Sam’s eyes roll.

“Just checking in on you, jerk. Making sure you haven’t done anything stupid lately,” he answers.

Sam has a sixth sense when it comes to Dean. He always calls when something comes up. Dean, as usual, responds to his crisis with sarcasm.

“It’s a good thing you called, dude. Really. ‘Cause I was just about to rob a liquor store, join a cult, and host an orgy with some local demons. Thought maybe I’d do some random vandalism, too.”

“Bite me.” Sam takes Dean’s smart ass answer for what it is – evasion of his problems. “What’s going on, Dean?”

Dean closes his eyes and runs a hand roughly through his hair. Even if sharing was a possibility, how could he explain the situation to Sam without sounding like a complete lunatic?

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he mumbles. “I think I’m gonna take a road trip this weekend. Just, clear my head and stuff.”

“Is this about that girl? What was her name, Chelsea? Cassie?”

“That’s been over for months,” Dean snaps.

Sam hums. “Look, you know you can tell me anything, right?”

_Oh god, here comes the feelings speech._

“Yeah, Sam. I’m fine. Enough about me. How’re you and Jess? Did she finally get smart and ditch your ass?” “We’re married, Dean, she’s not going to ‘ditch my ass’”.

They talk for a few more minutes, and Dean hangs up. He realizes (but refuses to acknowledge) that he’s worried about the mysterious angel. Something shady definitely went down in that tunnel-thing. He also refuses to analyze his decision to do as Castiel asked. He’s not even sure when he decided to do it.

*****

Castiel had assumed the Catalyst would be compliant and obedient. When his team first discovered that _actual people_ were falling through the Barriers, he noticed almost immediately that the pathways were attempting to break into _only one specific realm_. None of the pathways were making it across the Barrier. The people getting lost in the void within the Barrier were disrupting the delicate balance between the realms, thus destabilizing reality even more. He needed to identify the Catalyst whose energy could pull the Aberrations through the borders and into this unique realm, and he needed to find the person quickly.

He had not expected the person who must help save everything in existence to actually refuse to do it.

Raphael, his superior, was furious at Castiel’s failure to secure immediate and complete cooperation from Dean. He’d been observing their interaction through the pathway, and when Castiel failed, Raphael began punishing him immediately as he pulled Castiel back through his pathway. The attack (in front of Dean, no less) was not only painful, it was humiliating.

Castiel closes his eyes and slumps against one of the three walls in the Lynk’s control center, remembering the consequences of his lack of success. With a snap of his fingers, Raphael had dragged Castiel to the room where he . . .  taught obedience. The walls were fuzzy like clouds, and just sort of faded away, so it couldn’t exactly be called a _room_. A voice came through the angel’s head, taunting him, ridiculing him. _Yet another failure, Castiel? You were given one simple task. And you have been unable to secure the Catalyst’s cooperation! All of reality is at stake! And you tiptoe around him instead of just ordering his obedience! Why have you simply not tortured him into submission?_

“You _know_ the Lynk insists that he do it of his own free will,” Castiel answered softly.

 _“The punishment for failing to recruit the Catalyst,”_ Raphael’s voice gritted out _,_ ignoring him, “ _is eternal pain and torture in the fires of hell. I shall do you a favor and remind you of the importance of your responsibilities. Do not fail again.”_

Castiel had no time to respond before an invisible force rammed into his stomach hard enough to knock him over. He was pulled instantly to his feet by the suddenly materializing Raphael. He wrestled free but was immediately punched, hard, in the cheekbone by an invisible fist, sending flares of sharp pain across his face. Agony seared through him when his left wing was cruelly twisted and an unseen blade slashed across it, destroying a mass of sensitive feathers. Raphael was fast – too fast for a non-archangel to even see, let alone defend against.

Castiel could deal with the abuse to his body, but the pain in his wing was unbearable. Fear of losing his ability to fly was terrifying. He refused, however, to give his superior the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. Blood ran down his face into his mouth from punches to his right eye and nose. He spit it across the room.

The unseen assailant continued to rain punches on Castiel, who was defenseless against the unnaturally fast and brutal archangel.

Raphael snorted. _“If your Catalyst is as worthless as you, then we are all doomed.”_

Raphael disappeared, and with him the presence in Castiel’s mind and his invisible tormentor. His temporary prison dissolved. Grabbing his abdomen as pain flooded through him, he focused on it, mentally surrounded the pain and separated it from himself, willing it to go away. . .

Castiel reaches for his injured wing and absently, soothingly strokes the feathers surrounding the damage. He stares into the spinning Lynk. He is surprised (and greatly relieved) when he senses that Dean has decided to comply.

*****

Just after sunrise, Dean pulls up beside the bend in the small river just outside the tiny town of North Fork, Nebraska. The drive took longer than he expected, thanks to road construction. He (and three other cranky drivers) were diverted by road workers to a muddy gravel road full of potholes the size of beach balls. Fuck, it’s bad enough he had to get up in the middle of the night to drive to an obscure landmark in the middle of nowhere, without having to drive through an obstacle course just after he washed his Baby.

His irritability is somewhat soothed by the unexpected beauty of the area. The wide, clear river runs swiftly, falling over rocks in its path and splashing foam into the air. Red and orange-leafed maples grow along both sides of the river. Scarlet, white and yellow wildflowers are sprinkled randomly throughout the grass. The cool, moist air is refreshing. The serenity, Dean decides, almost makes the drive worthwhile; the area is an oasis of normalcy in a world that’s going to shit.

The trail to the old mill is little more than a mowed down strip through an otherwise unruly patch of weeds and very tall grass. Dean starts to walk along it, swatting irritably at mosquitos, when he hears an inhuman and very loud squeaking noise that’s almost musical.

Startled, he runs toward the source of the sound. He fleetingly wonders if traveling through the pathways is painful. He follows the trail around a small grove of trees and comes to a dead stop when the source of the screaming comes into view.

A woman- he thinks (she has lavender-tinged skin, silver hair, and black, oval alien eyes not unlike a demon’s) is hanging half in and half out of the Aberration. Her torso has crossed into Dean’s realm, but the rest of her is stuck in the pathway. On closer inspection Dean realizes the pathway has not completely entered this realm’s space: it loses and regains its integrity, with the woman disappearing and reappearing like her image is being flipped on and off with a remote control. Her arms flail, and she searches desperately for something to grab onto. Her eyes grow large when she sees Dean.

A bizarre series of blips, tones and squeaks leave her mouth, and Dean wonders how those alien noises could possibly come out of such an (arguably) human-looking being. Dean doesn’t need a translator, however, to know what they mean.

He moves directly under her as she reappears, and reaches up to grab her. Her outstretched arms flail just out of Dean’s reach. Frantically, he looks around for something to stand on. Her musical sounding cries for help (and definitely swearing) grow louder and border on intolerable. He just barely resists the urge to cover his ears.

He runs toward the river and slides down the sandy banks, but he finds nothing he can use, only some cottonwood root sprawling across the ground. He scrambles back up the bank to see the woman disappearing back through the hole, then partially returning. He needs to think of something, and sooner would be better than later.

Out of desperation he runs back toward the Aberration and leaps toward it, catching the woman just as she is pulled completely back into the pathway again. Hanging off the ground, his arms are now wrapped around her torso. She clings to his upper arms, and her fingers are digging into his skin hard enough to leave bruises.

The Aberration finally begins responding to the proximity of Dean’s energy, and painful muscle spasms rack his body. The pathway breaks completely through. He and the oddly colored creature he is desperately hanging on to are spit out and fall to the ground in a heap. The spasms stop when the pathway disappears.

A second crackling hole opens up and Castiel appears in the opening, wings flaring, energy shield sizzling. Dean is really too tired to care about how furious Castiel looks. He is not too tired, however, for his heart to pound harder at the sight of the disheveled man.

“Dean! Where were you?” Castiel demands furiously.

Dean boosts himself up onto his elbows. “What the hell? I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“You were almost too late! She was nearly lost! You m _ust_ guide the Leakers to safety! We have already lost too many! Soon, the balance between the two realms will _never_ be able to be fixed! You were lucky with Abarrelle and Vaudlar -”

Dean struggles to his feet. He isn’t taking this shit lying down.

“Lucky? _Lucky?_ Dude, I had a damn _seizure_ right before they appeared, while I was _driving_! I’m _lucky_ to be alive! Screw you and screw your damn broken reality! I didn’t ask for this – super special magical energy! Tell me again why any of this is my problem?”

“The end of existence is everyone’s problem, Dean,” he snaps. Castiel’s wings twitch as if they are trying to fly off on their own.

As Dean’s frustration approaches critical levels, the purple girl slowly sits up and dusts the dirt off her arms. She looks around at the trees and river as if she’s never seen anything like them before. _Hell,_ Dean thinks, _she probably hasn’t._

Castiel approaches her, and Dean realizes he hasn’t ever seen him _move_ before, not like this. The pathway drags oddly behind him, and Dean is able to see behind it. Not that there’s anything to see; it’s utterly invisible from the back. He looks at where Castiel should be standing, but he sees the girl and the scenery behind her.

Okay. That’s just _wrong_.

Dean walks back around the hole Castiel appeared in and is relieved to see he’s still here. The girl is smiling at Castiel and rapidly blinking her eyes. She begins to speak to him with her odd series of blips and tones. To Dean’s complete and utter shock, Castiel answers using the same odd noises. As he smiles back at her, she pushes herself off the ground, looks around one more time, and walks into the pathway Castiel arrived in. He makes the same motions with his hands as he made with the other couple as he returned them to their realm. Dean stares, mesmerized by Castiel’s long, graceful fingers, until he returns his attention to Dean.

“I deserve some answers, you son of a bitch,” he says quietly. Dean walks as close as he dares. Almost being sucked into some sort of empty hell has seriously darkened his mood. “Why did I have a seizure when the first Aberration, as you call it, appeared? Why did my muscles seize up just now when I pulled that girl through?”

Castiel frowns at the ground. “The seizures and muscle spasms are caused by the surge of energy through your body as it senses the Aberration,” he explains. His stunning blue eyes focus intently on Dean’s. “I’m sorry you must suffer such an inconvenience.”

“What the fuck? You’re _sorry_? An _inconvenience_? Seriously? Screw you!”

Castiel looks away.

Dean eyes him suspiciously. “Why wasn’t it as severe today?”

“Because you were late,” he snaps. “You weren’t close enough to bring the Aberration all the way through. It was not able to completely materialize.” Cas narrows his eyes. He jabs a finger behind him into the pathway, indicating the vanished girl. “She was almost lost to the void within the Barrier.”

For the first time, Dean notices that Castiel looks like _crap_. Even through his energy shield, Dean can see that his face is bruised. He has a black eye and swollen lip. One wing is torn at the top, and streaks of blood cling to the feathers.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Cas looks at him warily. “It’s no concern of yours,” he says quietly.

Dean narrows his eyes, and Cas adds, “it’s inconsequential.”

Dean shakes his head. He stares at the ground a moment, then announces, “Okay, man, I’m done. This is the shittiest weekend I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something. He gestures toward the spot where he pulled the girl out of thin air (sort of). “I don’t have time to haul ass around the country, keeping – whatever the fuck that was – from ruining the fucking world!”

Cas walks closer to stand in Dean’s personal space, and his energy shield briefly sizzles with colors. Dean notices (with reluctant sympathy) that he’s limping.

“It’s not just the world, Dean. It’s _all_ worlds,” Castiel says evenly. “And like it or not, the energy you possess is rare. Are you really so selfish that you would refuse to use it?”

Dean glares at Castiel, looking deeply into the angel’s eyes for the first time. Time seems to stop. Awe washes through him and he wonders how so many stars can exist within Castiel. Dean is mesmerized until Cas says his name, and he comes back to himself enough to remember that he’s kind of pissed.

“So what if I _do_ refuse? Do I even have a choice in this?” he asks softly.

Castiel visibly forces himself to unclench the hands that are balled into fists at his side. Dean wonders how hard Castiel could hit through the energy shield.

Cas takes a deep breath. “Your continuing failure to understand the importance-”

“I understand the importance! Why me?” Dean demands.

“There are very few beings like you who are capable of holding the energy. Our best guess is that the Universe has planted Catalysts such as yourself as kind of a . . . failsafe. Those like you exist throughout Time, and have, on occasion, dealt with minor tears in the borders separating worlds. The other Catalysts have simply been required to handle inanimate objects. You are the first and only one who has ever been responsible for human beings. We believe this to be a result of the current - crisis.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Castiel sighs and looks at the ground. “The truth is this. The energy within you has been present, but dormant, your entire life. Because we are now faced with the Lynk’s failure to maintain your realm’s stability, your energy has activated. It is powerful, more powerful than that of any Catalyst ever, and it is constantly building up. If you don’t use it, it will eventually disintegrate every cell in your body. For all intents and purposes, you will explode.”

“Yeah, that’s what you should’ve started with,” Dean says incredulously.

“Dean. There’s more. The energy within you – we’re not sure how long you’ll be able to contain it.”

“Okay, that sounds ominous.”

Castiel continues to stare at the ground as if the grass is speaking to him. Quietly, he says, “After the Aberrations have all been sealed and the balance of time and space has been restored, your energy will have no outlet. Because of its intensity, we believe it will continue to build now that it’s been activated.” Solemn blue eyes finally meet his, as Dean realizes what this means.

“I’m going to explode anyway,” he says flatly. “Or disintegrate. Whatever.”

Castiel sighs and flicks his injured wing distractedly. He’s obviously uncomfortable, but suddenly his expression changes completely, into something soft and almost human. “Dean, I’m sorry to have to put this on you. No one should have this kind of responsibility dumped on their shoulders. But if you don’t help us, reality will become more and more unstable and eventually fall apart. Telling you the number of lives that will be lost is pointless, because your brain can’t comprehend the number.” Uncertainly, he reaches out to touch Dean’s shoulder. The energy shield moves with his body and flows around his arm. Dean can feel the pressure of his touch, but not his actual hand. The sensation of being touched through the energy shield is just _weird_.

“I’ll do it, all right?” Dean surprises himself by saying, and he wonders briefly if this mysterious energy inside him is affecting his ability to think rationally. Despite the fact that he’s apparently _dying_ , Dean wants to help. He has a chance to save the world – to save _every_ world, with the added bonus of satisfying Castiel. He wonders when Castiel’s feelings started to matter to him. Numbly he wonders when _he_ started having feelings for Castiel. He realizes he’s actually falling for him, and wow, it does a lot of good now. For fuck’s sake, at what point did his brain decide to begin developing actual _feelings_ for the guy who just told him he’s gonna _explode_?

He thinks of Sam, suddenly, and how devastated he’ll be by Dean’s death. He’s thankful Sam has Jess to look out for him, but he’ll be lost without Dean just the same.

Castiel looks at him with such a grateful and relieved expression that Dean forgets to breathe. The staring is becoming uncomfortably tense, so Dean looks away. “Since apparently I’ve decided to ruin the last bit of my life for you,” he says, “at least tell me something about who it is I’m dying for.” He ignores Castiel’s wince. “Why don’t you, uh, tell me about yourself? Tell me about where you’re from.”

*****

Castiel is surprised at the personal question, but he quickly reminds himself that Dean is not interested in him. He merely wants to understand the situation he’s in. Castiel isn’t entirely sure why it matters to him either way, although he’s grudgingly aware that he’s developing a fondness for Dean. Maybe it’s because they share the same rebellious spirit. He assures himself that his attraction to Dean is merely professional interest, and has nothing to do with the fiery, passionate green eyes peering out from behind long lashes, the ridiculously adorable bow legs, the way his voice fills with ardent, righteous anger when he’s –

“Cas?”

His eyes focus on Dean’s. Oh yeah, he asked a question. Castiel tries to hide his blushing face and think of a way to explain. Before he can, however, waves of residual pain ripple through his stomach, and the agony flickers across his face before he can stop it. He ignores the pain and waves of nausea as much as possible, and stands straight to face Dean.

He ignores the way Dean is studying him. “My world,” he begins, “is outside of-”

“You’re hurt,” Dean interrupts him, “and don’t tell me it’s not a big deal, because it obviously is.”

Castiel, for the first time, is hyperaware of how close he is to Dean. He wonders how much Dean can see through the wavering, iridescent energy shield surrounding him.

“What the _hell_ happened to you?”

Castiel is slightly annoyed at the interruption but definitely surprised (pleasantly) by Dean’s concern.

“It is not of import,” he says shyly, looking away.

“Bullshit,” Dean responds. “Who did this to you?”

Castiel sighs. “My superiors were . . . concerned with your hesitation.”

“Fuck!”

“It is, as you said, not your problem.”

“Cas, I’m-”

“Will you consent to traveling to Minnesota?” Castiel asks him wearily.

“ _What?_ ”

“There will be an unusual Aberration occurring in approximately three days. I need you to go to a small town called Blue Earth, near the Interstate. I can’t pinpoint the exact time it will try to enter your realm, so you will need to be there as soon as you can, and wait for it.” He curls his damaged wing toward himself and grits his teeth.

Castiel sees Dean studying him through the energy shield. He knows his injuries must look horrifying, especially his torn wing and swollen face. Dean turns away from Cas and rubs a hand over the prickly stubble on his jaw. For one heart-stopping moment Castiel thinks Dean will refuse. His eyes widen in terror at the thought; he doesn’t think he can protect Dean from Raphael if he refuses to perform his duty again.

Dean turns back to Castiel. “Alright, Cas,” he says gently. “Tell your superiors I’m in, okay? I need to pack up some things and make some calls. Then I’ll travel wherever you send me to fix your damn Aberrations.” Dean realizes he will lose his job, because Zach will never allow him to take the time off he will need. But his protest dies on his lips when he looks at the angel.

The relief on Castiel’s face is so profound, and Dean can’t even begin to imagine what the dicks upstairs must have done to him.

Even with his battered face and mutilated wing, he is beautiful. Dean wants to hold him, wants to stroke the feathers on his injured wing. Which he can’t, exactly, because _energy shield,_ and fuck his life.

“Thank you, Dean.”

He turns back into the pathway and is gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean takes an exit off the Interstate and pulls into the parking lot of the first diner he sees. A number of semis are parked outside, and the place is packed; both are good signs that this place has decent food. Dean has made his calls, and now he needs to talk to Sam. If he doesn’t talk to somebody, he’s going to lose his mind.

Quitting a job without notice is not his style, and even though Zach is a dick, he felt guilty telling him he wouldn’t be back. And Zach didn’t exactly take the news gracefully. But . . . priorities, man. Sam and Jessica won’t survive if he doesn’t fix this, and that’s reason enough. He is more than willing to die for them.

And Castiel: what would happen to him if he refused? Dean knows a thing or two about injuries, and he knows Cas was in a lot more pain than he let on. Plus, there’s the tears in reality. Tears. In reality. People stuck in pathways between other worlds that need Dean to guide them safely into his realm so they aren’t spit out into nothingness.

It’s too much, all of this, and he’s not sure he can handle it.

As he settles into a booth at the restaurant, he picks up his phone and scrolls through the contacts until he comes to Sam’s number. The question is, what’s he gonna say? Hey Sammy, I have a terminal case of too much energy that will make my cells disintegrate after I save time and space? It sounds like a goddamn episode of Dr. Who, and there’s not enough alcohol in the world for _this_ conversation.

He orders two cheeseburgers and a bottle of beer (gotta start somewhere) from a very attractive redhead. She casually mentions that her shift ends at 9:00, but Dean, for once, is not in the mood.

The world really must be ending.

Dean looks at his phone like it might burn him, and with a sigh, he presses the number to call Sam. The phone rings several times before Sam picks it up breathlessly.

“Dude,” he breathes. “This better be important.” He hears Jess in the background telling Sam to hurry up.

Oh my god.

“Sammy, never _ever_ answer the phone during sex,” Dean hisses in horror. “Did I teach you _nothing_?”

Dean ends the call and drops his phone on the table with a shudder. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say anyway.

*****

Blue Earth is a small town, but it has a motel, and Dean books a room. It’s small but clean, and he doesn’t need a lot of space. He tosses his duffle bag onto the floor, and opens up his laptop case on the bed. After his long drive and his earth-shattering weekend (he grimaces when he realizes it could be literal), he deserves some relaxation. He puts his six pack of beer on the table (gotta love those corner convenience stores), sits down and opens his laptop.

He navigates to his favorite site and logs in. He’s only a few minutes into a very intriguing video (apparently no one mentioned to these people that gravity exists) and his mind starts wandering. What sort of cosmic event could possibly be causing reality to break apart? Why haven’t the governments figured this out? Or worse, what if they have?

Dean’s imagination provides him with a vivid image of Sam and Jess getting lost forever in an endless void, not even allowed to _die_ , apparently, but put in stasis. Oh HELL no.

His thoughts turn to the strange angel. Dean wonders how the man handles the responsibility of _repairing reality_ and feels a pang of sympathy for him. He wonders about the dickhead who attacked him and feels a flicker of guilt: he knew from the beginning this job wasn’t a choice.

He has so many questions about Castiel; for instance, how old is he? How exactly does his creating a pathway thing work? He realizes he never gave Cas a chance to answer his question about where he was from. He wonders if he has a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Mere curiosity, of course. The guy is kind of cold, and yeah, he kind of has a right to be stressed, but he needs to relax a little.

Dean guesses he could thaw him out.

He wonders how it would feel to run his hands across those feathers. Just the thought of those giant powerful wings . . . and Dean has a feather kink and a very vivid imagination. Then there’s the whole super power thing, and how is that not sexy as fuck, and his _voice_. Dean shuts his laptop. He may never need to watch porn again.

Three beers later, Taylor Swift encourages Dean to shake it off, and he realizes Sam is calling. Dean tries to put from his mind why Sam sounds so happy, because some things aren’t meant to be shared between brothers. He tells Sam an edited version of the truth: he has a rare disorder that will kill him.

Sam is just as freaked out as Dean expected. The barrage of questions goes on and on.

“Jesus, Dean! When did you find out? Have you gotten a second opinion? Are you feeling okay? What are your symptoms? How long have you known? Do you want us to come home?”

Dean finally cuts him off, placating him by promising to call soon after he speaks with his (imaginary but Sam doesn’t know it) specialist. The reality of his upcoming demise becomes painfully clear when Sam ends the call by telling Dean he loves him.


	5. Chapter 5

So. Blue Earth, Minnesota, Dean thinks. He decides to go for a quick drive so he can become familiar with the town. He hopes to guide the Aberration away from the populated areas for obvious reasons. He has no idea how close he needs to be for the Aberration to – sense him? or whatever the hell it does. It would be helpful to know what his range is. He should have asked Cas, he thinks bitterly.

As he walks through the motel’s parking lot to the Impala, he feels lightning bolts seizing through him as dark circles and lights flash across his vision. He falls to the ground, grunting as his muscles freeze up. He convulses for only a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity. When the seizure ends, he lies on the ground and wills the muscle pain to stop. No matter how many times he has to endure this, he knows he will never, ever get used to it.

He pushes himself off the ground, brushing at a couple of rocks that are stuck to his palms. There’s no warped, sizzling air indicative of an Aberration, but it’s got to be close. He drives to the end of a paved street, and decides to continue out onto the dirt road. After passing a couple of remotely located farmhouses with tidy, well-kept buildings and free-range livestock, he comes to a deserted looking field. Hovering just off the ground in the middle of the field is the Aberration. Castiel is nowhere to be seen, and Dean fights down a wave of disappointment.

This one looks different than the others he’s seen so far. Instead of swirling around the edges and making the familiar sizzling noise, it seems to be _sucking air into itself_. Dean sees some dirt on the ground disappear into the hole.

_Crap, this can’t be right._

He turns off the car and slowly walks up to it, cautiously waiting for someone to fall through to this side. He looks around to see if anyone is laying on the ground; maybe he was late again, but he doubts it since he just had the energy surge seizure.

What if the Leaker got stuck like the last person? What if someone’s stuck inside the tunnel?

With a resigned sigh he moves closer and tries to see into the Aberration. He needs to know what he’s getting into. Without warning a force from the hole yanks him off the ground, and he is caught in a swirling vortex. He hears himself scream for Castiel as the pathway swallows him up.

*****

Castiel has returned to the control center. It’s a deceptively simple looking area. Three bare, white walls block off a space containing only two things: a platform that is capable of floating completely around and above the Lynk, and a small sphere. The sphere is perhaps six feet in diameter, and can communicate with the Lynk as it buzzes and rotates continuously.

Castiel was chosen by Raphael himself to be heaven’s go-between with the Leakers. Although the archangel is currently pissed, Castiel knows he trusts him to get the job done. Raphael is a dick with a temper, and this isn’t the first time Castiel has invoked his wrath. This was, in fact, one of the kinder tortures he’s endured from a nation of angels who despise his caring nature, his politics, and his independent decisions.

His injuries are healing slowly. As an angel he can heal himself of any wound, except those inflicted by archangels, and the pain is inconvenient. That Dean would notice his injuries (or care) hadn’t occurred to him. A warm feeling spirals within him, and he smiles for the first time in a very long time.

Thinking about Dean has become dangerously distracting. Developing feelings for a Catalyst is unheard of. He’s always been sensitive and caring toward his charges. But he’s never been attracted to one before, and he’s never given a single thought to any of them beyond what was required for each mission.

He’s attracted to Dean. Telling himself that Dean isn’t even the same species as he is does nothing to change that. He can’t seem to get his mind off him. He thinks about running his fingers through Dean’s hair, scraping his fingers gently across the stubble on his face, and kissing those beautiful soft lips. He’s never done these things before, and he wants to experience all of it. None of it is possible, however; and even if it were, the energy shield makes it impossible. He has to stop torturing himself with his pointless fantasies and get to work.

Easier said than done.

Shaking his head to clear it, he closes his eyes and positions his fingers on the sphere in front of him. As they sink into it, darkness dissolves into visual information. The Aberration he warned Dean about is forming in a strange and confusing way. The power surging through it is unprecedented. Castiel can find no evidence of anyone (or anything, for that matter) that is about to switch realms. The sensations he feels from the space where the Barrier is failing are unusual. Normally he is able to see each soon-to-be-Leaker hours in advance of their unwilling journey, although he is unable to stop it from happening. But although a pathway is coming into being, there is no sign of life anywhere near it.

He looks up and sees three angels standing near the spinning Lynk. The silvery, shimmering veil (which is also the source of Castiel’s energy shield) flows seamlessly around the giant sphere and encompasses them. Similar to a sponge, they can temporarily soak up a tiny part of the Lynk and sample it, to determine the current level of degradation.

The angels’ silver wings are interlaced with small bursts of ebony feathers. Idly, Cas wonders if Dean would find them attractive. He’s tired, so tired, of the shame and bitterness he feels about his own cursed wings. Castiel has held his job for centuries; he was created to do it. The realms’ Barriers normally have minor, inherent flaws; small, naturally occurring tears to repair. Small objects and even small animals (and one time, memorably, an earthworm) are occasionally randomly transported from realm to realm as a naturally occurring phenomenon. Castiel has forgotten how many Catalysts he’s guided to repair the small Aberrations with perfect success. He has always found each world entertaining and intriguing, and he enjoys what he does.

At least, he used to, until the Aberrations became serious and imminently threatening to reality.

Castiel studies the currently damaged Barrier that will soon be seeking out Dean’s energy. He sees it beginning to disintegrate near Dean’s realm, but as usual, there is no fathomable reason why it’s happening. He turns his attention to other Barriers to check for the formation of new pathways. He isn’t sure what he’ll do if more than one open up at the same time; Dean can’t be two places at once, and there’s no guarantee a second Catalyst will be activated while one already exists.

For now, he sees nothing, and Dean should have a little time before the pathway finishes forming and finds Dean’s realm.

He leaves the Lynk’s control center and goes to his quarters to check on his injuries. Angels don’t need sleep, but they do need time to meditate and rest, and occasionally, to have privacy: Castiel’s two rooms are large enough to facilitate these needs, but nothing more.

Seating himself on his small bed, he settles his wings on the soft pillows positioned on each side. Gingerly, he runs tentative fingers across the tear in his wing to examine the damage. He hadn’t noticed how much dried blood was stuck to his feathers. He grabs a cloth and begins to carefully clean it off.

Castiel’s life has spanned eons, and never has he found himself in such unfamiliar territory. Catalysts, traditionally, are young children. Kids are much more responsive and amenable than adults when it comes to an angel appearing out of nowhere and telling them to find a nearby object that doesn’t belong in their Universe, then return it to Castiel (who then returns it to its proper world). Castiel tells them it’s a game and they agree enthusiastically. Prior Catalysts have rarely been used more than once.

Now he’s faced with Dean, an _adult_ who has trouble believing what he sees with his own eyes. To Castiel’s complete horror, he can’t stop thinking about this man, even though he can never have him. Dean is fiery, smart, stubborn, fascinating.

Dean has drawn the Aberration to earth: he can feel it. Frantically locking his desires firmly into a small corner of his mind, he leaves his quarters and runs to the Lynk. He steps close to it, and as the energy shield surrounds him, he hears it.

“ _CAS!_ ” screams a panicked voice.

Castiel looks around, startled. He hadn’t realized a complete telepathic channel had formed between himself and Dean. Such a connection only forms between angels who have chosen to be partners. A Catalyst even possessing the _ability_ to use a telepathic signal is unheard of, but Dean is using it. In all likelihood, he’s unaware he’s even doing it.

_“Castiel? “Cas! I need your help, man! Where the hell are you?”_

Castiel locates Dean and immediately suppresses the horror that flashes through him; Dean is in terrible danger.

Castiel, like all angels, is mortified by the place Dean has arrived in. He’s heard about it, of course, but never thought he would actually travel here. The odds of Dean being pulled into it are so astronomically low that they basically don’t exist.

Simply forming a pathway through the Barrier will not get him to Dean. He steps deeper into the Lynk itself, knowing that the beginning of this realm is deep inside the sphere. The three silver-winged angels studying the Lynk’s Barriers stare at him in surprise, which turns to hostility when they realize where he’s attempting to go. Their disgust radiates to him.

He doesn’t care.

Penetrating this Barrier is much more difficult than breeching the others, even in optimum conditions. With the instability of the Universe, even common travelling is becoming more difficult. He checks that the energy shield is surrounding him completely, then steps into a slightly unstable pathway. Getting to Dean will require a couple of guesses, he supposes.

He is thrown around as he passes between the Barriers, and even the protective shield that surrounds him is not a great enough buffer to protect him entirely from injury. Castiel winces in pain at the force throwing him back and forth within the pathway.

When he is finally spit out into the realm he aimed for, the energy field is thankfully intact, but there is no sign of Dean.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean lands in a heap on the soft, powdery ground. Opening his eyes (after sneezing) he looks out at the strangest landscape he has ever seen. Rocky, mountainous fingers, some of which are hundreds of feet high, reach into the sky. Warm, hazy air settles heavily on every jagged surface. Crimson and grey swirls fill the sky, like the atmosphere on Jupiter.

Dean feels dizzy; unbeknownst to him the oxygen content of the air is different than what he’s used to. Warily, he looks back at the spot where the Aberration spit him out. His vision swims, as if the air is liquid and turning his head has made waves. When he’s able to focus, he sees no evidence of the pathway. Castiel is nowhere to be seen.

Dean swallows and assesses his situation. All he has with him are his car keys, his wallet, his phone, and the knife he carries regularly. The barren landscape surrounding him can’t possibly be any version of Earth: there is no evidence of life, neither plant nor animal. And, because his life is like this, there is no evidence of water. Dean needs to get up and get moving and hope this version of reality isn’t as barren as it appears.

He walks forward, and immediately the world around him shrinks. He’s only taken half a dozen steps, but has somehow crossed the length of a football field. He carefully continues to step forward, and the rocky, alien formations become closer much faster than they have any right to. His brain is actively rejecting the impossible information it’s receiving from his eyes, and it’s making Dean nauseous in addition to being dizzy. He turns (slowly) to look toward the spot of his landing. He wonders if he should return, in case the Aberration opens back up.

“Castiel!” he screams. “Cas! I need your help, man! Where the hell are you?”

He wonders if he’ll be stuck here for the rest of his life. So much for saving reality. He should be mildly alarmed that this statement makes sense.

_Dean?_

Dean whips around, looking for the source of Castiel’s deep, scratchy voice, but he’s nowhere in sight, and his sudden turn results in violent vomiting.

 _Dean?_ The voice is more urgent this time, and Dean realizes it’s in his head. Shit, hearing voices can’t be a good sign.

He spits several times, trying to clear the rancid taste of bile from his mouth, before swiping a hand across his lips.

 _Dean! Answer me!_ Castiel sounds frantic. _I’m speaking directly to your mind. Answer me with your thoughts!_

This isn’t happening.

 _Fuck you,_ Dean thinks, as intensely as he can. He’s unsure if Cas can hear him, but he focuses on him, imagining they’re talking face to face, and continues thinking at him. _Where the hell are you, man? Cause I appear to be on fucking Mars!_ He pauses. _Cas? Am I on Mars?_

 _You are in a realm that shouldn’t exist,_ Cas’s thoughts tell him softly. After a (terrifying) pause, he says, _I’m trying to get to you. Keep talking to me._

 _Why the hell did I get sucked through that pathway? The Leakers are supposed to come to me! I didn’t agree to fucking_ space travel.

Dean waits for a few minutes, but Cas doesn’t respond. Fuck, angel telepathy is like a bad phone connection.

A couple yards ahead of him, the pinkish red sand that covers the landscape begins to shift. Blinking rapidly, he tries to focus his eyes, but this bizarre environment makes that nearly impossible. Still, he sees an area roughly the size of a dumpster sink beneath the surface. A soft crumpling sound ends the eerie silence, and a dark, bubbly brown tentacle reaches up through the churning pink sand.

_Cas! Now would be a good time for you to pop in!_

No answer.

Dean pulls his knife, although he doubts it’ll do much good should the tentacle attack. Shredded skin hangs from the tentacle, or maybe it’s a finger? It keeps coming out of the ground and is soon joined by a second, and a third.

_Maybe it doesn’t know I’m here._

Absurdly, he thinks he should take a picture: Sam should really see this.

Dean needs a plan, like, _now_. Cas must be lost himself, or maybe he still can’t find Dean. Or worse, the tentacles have pulled him into the sand. Whatever, he’s going to strangle the son of a bitch if he ever sees him again.

The tentacles slither up onto the ground. Two more have appeared, and the creature now resembles a five-legged spider, crawling toward the grouping of rocks and boulders that stretch into the distance off to Dean’s left.

Sand gets into Dean’s nose and he sneezes.

The creature’s tentacles turn toward him, and in one slow lurch, the creature crosses the distance to Dean.

“All right, you son of a bitch. Stay the fuck back and nobody gets hurt.”

A tentacle slowly reaches up toward Dean’s face. Revolted, he stands as still as he can, afraid to spook the fucking tentacle, because the thing is obviously faster than he is. Hopefully the thing will decide he’s not food and move on.

It lunges at his forehead, and he falls to the ground in pain when it connects. His entire life is replayed before his eyes, beginning with his conception and birth, and Dean has never wanted to unsee something so badly before. The tentacles search his memory, trying to figure out what he is. They scroll through his childhood, his teenage years (this has to be exaggerated, there’s no way he was this much of a douche), his first few jobs, his entirely too many hookups, his job at the bar, his time at Zach’s shop, and his relationship with Cassie. As the creature digs through his past, blinding light erupts behind his eyes. He knows he’s in trouble. He can’t move, can’t defend himself; the creature has him immobilized. The barrage of images intensifies. The creature is taking him apart, piece by piece, and he can’t make it stop.

The flare of an even brighter light is punctuated by a piercing, howling shriek, and the creature’s hold on him lessens. He immediately slices at the tentacles, and his knife connects with the horrifying flesh. Warm liquid squirts out onto his hand, and he wipes it off on his jeans disgustedly.

Another tentacle takes the place of the damaged one. Before it can attach itself to Dean’s head and continue binge-watching his life, however, the blinding light obliterates the creature altogether, and Dean opens his eyes to find a burnt pile of what he’s decided to call a spider octopus (spidopus? Spidopus is a cool name).

Castiel stands on the other side of the creature, staring down at it.

“Bout time you showed up!” Dean pants.

“Dean! Are you hurt?”

Dean isn’t sure if he spoke out loud or in his head.

Huh.

“I’m fine, just-”

Cas steps forward and reaches for his forehead. He touches him with two fingers, letting his Grace flow through the shield and into Dean’s body.

“All right, I’ve had about enough of people digging around in my head -” he begins. The flash of blueish white that emanates from the angel’s fingers and washes through him feels tingly, but the pain in his mind subsides completely.

He opens his eyes to see Cas solemnly looking at him from two feet away. He insists to himself that the reason his heart is pounding is from being attacked, and not from the flickering ebony wings and thick pink lips and deep blue eyes and fucking sex hair sticking up in every direction like he’d been completely debauched before he came to rescue Dean.

“Man, am I glad to see you,” Dean manages to say to the concerned, frowning face in front of him. “What happened, Cas? How did I end up here? And where exactly _is_ here?”

Cas glances over his shoulder at the mutilated tentacles that are beginning to sink into the ground.

“We are in a place that shouldn’t exist,” he answers cryptically.

Dean almost laughs. “Newsflash, genius, it exists. Now how the hell do we get out of here?”

Cas looks around nervously. “I don’t know. My pathway dissolved right after I arrived here, and without it, I’m – not entirely sure -” He frowns.

“Not entirely sure of what?”

Cas sighs. “Not entirely sure how to locate earth.”

“Jesus, what the fuck?”

“I told you that the Lynk is the place that all worlds begin. It is the engine, you might say, that keeps all of reality – existing. Propelling forward.”

“Okay,” Dean says, taking a deep breath. He can be patient (no matter what Sam says). “Go on.”

“You have fallen into a place that isn’t real.”

Patience is overrated.

“Are you fucking kidding me? _”_ Dean asks incredulously.

The energy shield around Cas ripples with its metallic soap bubble color. “This place – it is – the absence of existence. We are no longer connected in any way to the Lynk.”

Dean stares at him wide-eyed. “When you get me home, I’m going to kick your ass!”

Cas ignores him. His eyes widen as they focus on something over Dean’s shoulder.

“We have to move. Hold on,” he tells Dean. He puts an arm around his back and wraps the other beneath his ass and lifts him effortlessly off the ground. With a surge of power, he flaps his wings, and they fly toward the fingers-slash-mountain things. Cas’s energy field feels prickly even through his clothes, like when his foot falls asleep. Dean wraps himself around Cas like an octopus, because flying is fucking terrifying. Out of the corner of his eye he sees several sets of tentacles converge on the spot they’d just been standing on, and yeah, maybe flying is okay in this situation.

Incredibly, his (traitorous) body thinks this entire situation is nothing more than incredibly hot foreplay. Communication must be hindered on this planet between his brain and his south brain because this is _not the fucking time_.

The mountains (fingers? vertical rocks? Oh God, _planet penises_?) rush toward them at an incredible rate; whatever is causing the distortion of distance on the land seems to also affect the air, and the once-distant mountains are beneath their feet in no time.

Cas lowers Dean carefully to the rocky ground, with his hands lingering on his waist. Instead of releasing his hold on Cas, Dean tightens his arms around him until their bodies are as close as they can be and their faces are mere inches apart. Cas glances from Dean’s lips to his eyes. His protective energy flickers colors across his face before Dean can make out his expression. Dean reaches for his face but stops before he touches the shield.

Temporarily forgetting they have _fallen outside reality and are being chased by tentacles_ , Dean says, “Cas, is there any way – can we meet somehow without this goddamn thing between us? Cause it’s kind of hard to touch you – to even see you – and I need – I need to do those things,” he finishes lamely.

“I would like that,” he says softly. “I’ve never touched a human body before. I’ve never wanted to, not until I met you.”

“I want to touch your wings.”

Cas swallows. “And I want to feel you touching them. I’ve – I’ve wondered what you would do with them if you had the chance.”

“Jesus, Cas -”

Cas releases him and clears his throat, and like that, the moment is over. Dean looks away and gauges the distance of the approaching tentacles.

“We’ve got to find a way out of here,” Cas says awkwardly, blue eyes snapping back to the landscape.

“Ya think? Can’t you just zap us back the direction you came from? Wouldn’t that lead back to earth?”

“Creating pathways is not an exact science,” Cas says tersely. “I’m recreating the memory of how your space – felt. And of how you felt within it.” Dean sees a flicker of hurt cross his face as he adds, “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Yeah, okay. Do better. And hurry.”

“We’re out of time,” Cas mutters, and he begins winding his hands through the air, like Dean’s seen him do before. Nothing happens.

“Uh, Cas? We’re cutting it close here.” Dean stares down at the multitude of tentacle creatures slithering toward them. Without warning, the powdery sand erupts and shoots into the sky as a gargantuan tentacle bursts up from beneath the ground. It focuses on them and slithers toward them, more quickly than gravity (or reality) should allow.

“Cas, _what the hell are you doing?_ ”

“Shaping a pathway out of here. Stop yelling at me. Doing this without the power of the Lynk is – difficult.”

Castiel cocks his head and stares intently at something Dean can’t see. He winds his hands again, and Dean sees the air in front of them waver. Dean looks down at the creatures, who are currently scaling the mountains and creeping closer. One or two more moves and they’ll fall victim to evil slimy tentacles in some sort of non-reality and this is not how Dean plans to give up the ghost, thank you very much.

“Cas! _Hurry the fuck up!_ ”

Cas grabs him as a tentacle touches his leg, and throws him into the pathway that is still forming around him.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean lands near North Fork, in almost the exact same spot as the Leaker came through. After hitching several rides across a couple hundred miles, Dean returns to Blue Earth and locates the Impala, which looks no worse for wear despite having been parked unattended by a field for . . . a day? Two? Dean isn’t sure how long he’s been gone; who the hell knows how time works outside of reality.

He returns to the motel and discovers his key card still works, at least. He goes into the bathroom, sheds his clothes, and gets in the shower. Hot steamy water washes away the dust as well as the stuff from the tentacles (blood? slime? ooze?). Fuck, he misses the good old days (last week) when he used to just fix cars.

He has to admit to himself, though, that flying through the inside of Cas’s hastily created pathway was kind of awesome and - intimate. He saw worlds flashing by, like pictures in a slideshow. He felt Cas engulfing him, filling Dean’s entire body with grace that mixed with the essence of the pathway. He’d expected Cas to be right behind him, but the pathway closed behind Dean.

Horrifying visions of bubbly, oozing tentacles ripping Cas apart turn into images of him being lost in the void. Dean’s stomach churns, and he tries not to think of Cas wandering, lost and alone, through some vast, empty space, eternally looking for a way out and knowing there isn’t one.

*****

Castiel can only hope Dean made it through the pathway, and that the pathway led to his home. Without his connection to the Lynk, he has no way to know with any certainty. A sense of wrongness, emptiness and panic has settled over the place where the Lynk’s buzzing power is supposed to be. In all of his existence, he has never been without the Lynk’s presence, and he feels helpless.

He destroyed the tentacle that reached for Dean, and never has smiting something been so disturbingly satisfying. The other tentacles finally disappeared back down the mountains, and slithered back beneath the sandy surface; apparently, they have a modicum of intelligence, or at least a sense of self-preservation.

He looks across the dismal, lonely place he is trapped in. Without access to the Lynk, his power supply is cut off, and smiting the tentacle used up most of what he had left in reserve. Eventually, he will no longer be able to maintain his energy shield.

_Don’t panic. Focus._

Dean needs his help, desperately, and there’s too much at stake to give up now.

He needs to find a safer place to think in case the creatures return. The wind has picked up sharply, and sand is flying everywhere. Raising his wings, he lifts off and soars as high as he dares and studies the landscape from above. The stone pillars a small distance away reach much higher into the sky than the ones he just left. Investigation reveals one of the pillars is wide enough at the top for him to safely land, but steep and narrow enough for the tentacles to struggle climbing it.

Castiel is worried about Dean. If the pathway he created didn’t break completely through the Barrier, Dean will be lost. His accuracy had to be perfect.

Closing his eyes, he tries to focus on Dean, to sense him using their telepathic connection. To join him in his world (or whatever world he happened to arrive at) he’ll have to make another pathway. With his power drain, though . . . his shield is flickering as it is; after using his energy to escape to safer ground with Dean, the shield’s almost gone.

He thinks of Dean. He closes his eyes to concentrate on the soul that is so uniquely his, glowing gold among a sea of shadows and darkness.

Angels have, over the span of their existence, sought out human company. Castiel, frankly, has never understood the appeal, not until now; he’s always taken care of his body’s biological needs on his own. But Dean, he thinks as his mind reaches across time and space in the general direction and era he sent him, has completely reset his opinion and understanding of attraction to humans.

Before the Lynk began to break down, the risk of contamination both to the realms and to an angel’s body when crossing through the Barriers was minimal and rarely even taken into consideration. There was no need for energy shields. Even so, Cas has never touched a human, not even platonically. He has never had a reason to even want to, until now.

At long last he senses Dean’s soul, but he no longer has enough power to both maintain his shield and create the pathway. He considers his options. If he stays here, his shield will fail, and although the atmosphere sustained Dean, it won’t necessarily be compatible with _his_ body. Plus, the strength of the wind blowing the powdery dirt through the air could sandblast holes in his wings.

On the other hand, if he creates an unstable pathway and doesn’t reach Dean, he could end up anywhere; his most likely destination would be the void, and he really doesn’t want to spend the rest of time trapped in darkness.

With no warning an intense surge of power flows through his body. Not questioning how or why his batteries are suddenly recharged (there’ll be time for that later), he regains his focus on Dean’s location. The protective power of his energy shield intensifies. With his hands, he shapes and directs the surge of power to form the pathway in the direction and time he believes Dean traveled toward. The chaotic, spasming pulse of Dean’s realm begins to take shape at the end of it and _thank God_. He doesn’t sense Dean’s presence in the cold void of the Barrier, so he must have gotten through. Leaving the tentacles behind so he can reunite with Dean sounds like the best plan he’s had in centuries. He leaps into the flickering pathway, hoping the mystery energy surge can get him through to Dean.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean sits on the bed in his hotel room. The shower didn’t do much to calm his nerves. The dark, reddish orange walls are still closing in on him; the musty smell of the striped brown and red bedspread makes him want to gag. He’s holding a cup of coffee that he made in the tiny coffee pot sitting on the counter top by the sink. Staring into the dark liquid is not providing any answers. Frustrated, he gets up and dumps it down the drain.

He’s terrified for Castiel. His absence feels worse than the catastrophic loss of his best friend Charlie.

 _Castiel is not dead_ , he tells himself firmly. _There is a way to get him back, and I’m going to find it_.

He turns on the TV. Maybe the background noise will help him think. A couple beers are in the small refrigerator; they will work better than the coffee, anyway, when it comes to relaxation.

When the nightly news comes on, the top story is a plane crash. Twenty minutes after leaving the busy Atlanta airport, the pilot reported a noise, not unlike a sonic boom, that was heard over the engine noise throughout the plane. Flight attendants were having trouble consoling the panicking passengers as the plane began to shake. Six minutes and twenty seconds after the initial report, the pilot reported the air was wavering, as if extreme heat waves were rippling around at thirty thousand feet.

The plane lost contact with air traffic controllers, and crashed to the ground a few minutes later.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean says slowly.

Revelation comes in many forms, and this one absolutely _sucks_. The noises, the wavering air; obviously the thinning of the Barriers is becoming worse, and now it may be causing _plane crashes_. Not only that, assuming it was actually an Aberration, why was it trying to push through in a place that was so far away from Dean? Dean’s suddenly pulsing with adrenaline; the panicky urge to do something, go somewhere, to be anywhere but here is overwhelming. But go where?

“Cas!” he screams helplessly after standing up from the bed. “I need you, where the hell are you, man?” His low voice breaks on the last word.

In a fifty-fifty mix of desperation and frustration, he yells, “HEY! You bastards in the Lynk! You may have noticed, Castiel needs your help!”

He knows they can’t hear him. It’s like praying to a god that doesn’t exist and expecting a miracle. But he can’t stop his fury.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you, you angelic dickbags! If I’m supposed to save all of friggin’ _reality_ , you better get him back here, because I can’t fucking do this alone! Your damn holes in the world caused a plane crash! One hundred and five people dead! Maybe the next plane falls through one of your damn pathways! What happens then, huh?”

He jumps when fists pound on the other side of the wall, and he hears “shut up, jerk!” from the neighboring hotel guests.

His shoulders slump, and he falls back onto the bed. “Soulless bastards,” he mutters.

He wants to leave, but there’s nowhere to _go._ He hopes that Cas returns to the spot where he left this realm, but he knows with certainty that it won’t happen.

He moves to the uncomfortable chair that sits next to the table that holds his laptop. After pointless hours of looking into unusual events worldwide, he dozes off. He doesn’t usually dream – much – and when he does, it tends to involve dancing women or cars he’s worked on and sometimes a mixture of both.

Tonight is different.

He finds himself standing in a canyon, with water cascading down from high above his head into the clearest water he has ever seen. A standing pool with large stones sprinkled across it sits at the beginning of a small stream which is fed by the waterfall. He sees, fuck his life, an Aberration open up across the canyon.

A large image of Castiel’s face fills the opening, but Castiel says nothing, merely looks at Dean.

“Where is this place?” Dean yells over the sound of crashing water.

Cas doesn’t answer, doesn’t show any sign that he even heard him, so he repeats his question, as loud as he can without tearing his throat. Cas offers no response, just continues on with his serene stare. Startled, he realizes there is no energy shield surrounding Cas. For the first time, he is seeing Cas as he is, not how he imagines him through the shield he always stays within.

He fades back into the tunnel as Dean frantically screams his name, reaches impossibly for him, runs into the water in a fruitless effort to get closer.

He’s still calling his name when he wakes up.

_Fuck, how the hell am I supposed to find him?_

He grabs the remote and points it at the TV. A commercial comes on and he stops cold, leaving his hand and the remote in midair. A few seconds into the announcement that some toilet paper is indeed superior to others, another message overlays it.

The message shows him the canyon he stood in in his dream.

A wooden sign with white painted letters states that the site is called Pepper Falls. A quick Internet search shows it’s only a few miles from where Dean landed when Cas threw him from the place-that-shouldn’t-exist-but-does-anyway.

_Cas. You found me._

Faintly, on the very edge of perception, he hears, _I need you Dean._

Quickly, he checks out of the motel (finally, this place _sucks_ ). Sliding behind the wheel of the Impala, he heads back in the direction he came from, but in his Baby this time, which is much more enjoyable than traveling via strangers (who are dumb enough to pick up hitchhikers).

Hours later he pulls into the parking lot of Pepper Falls. Whatever he expected to find -it definitely wasn’t this.

*****

After parking his car in a gravelly lot next to a camouflage-colored Jeep, several sedans and a couple of trucks, (great, a ton of potential witnesses to see a fucking hole in the sky– something he wanted when all of this first started but definitely not now) he walks toward the colorful map encased in glass near the parking lot that shows how to get to the canyon and the waterfall. His eyes frantically search the landscape and the sky for any sort of disturbance. To his left, tons of trees are growing thick around the narrow trail leading downhill, and he’s guessing if something opened up in there, there would be visible damage to the forest, as well as panicked hikers. To his right are some picnic tables, a modern playground, a monument and a small building that is probably a restroom.

He can feel Cas here, but he must be somewhere deeper in the park.

Hiking it is.

After a quarter of a mile, (what are the damn birds so happy about and whoever invented mosquitos needs to suffer in the deepest pit of hell) he hears a new sound added to the wind swishing through the trees and the sound of bubbling water. The problem is, he can’t identify the direction it’s coming from.

The constant drone of a single note interspersed with occasional coarse growling grows louder. He continues walking, wishing the birds would shut the hell up so he was able to hear more. Even better: now squirrels and buzzing insects are chiming in to the melody. Leaving the established trail, he picks through trees and underbrush.

Suddenly Cas is in his head, and thank GOD.

 _Cas?_ He projects as hard as he can. No sarcastic remarks or angry outbursts; he has a feeling time might be important right about now.

 _Dean?_ comes a voice that is half pain and half relief.

_Tell me – think at me, whatever- where you are. I’ll find you._

_Dean, something’s wrong._ Dean has never heard (or maybe felt – that part is becoming unclear) such desperation and fear from Cas.

_Dammit, Cas, I can’t help you if I can’t find you. Tell me what you see right now._

A brief silence follows, and Dean considers climbing to the top of a tree or something to get a better view of the park.

_A small river. No, a stream. I hear a waterfall. Close. Dean –_

Dean races toward the sound of splashing water. The hair on his arms stands up, just like when Cas opened the pathway into his living room.

_Cas, I think I’m close to you-_

_Stop! I’m right here!_

Dean looks around frantically and notices a few trees that look as if they’ve fallen victim to a lightening strike. Beneath the branches that fell to the ground, he sees a sliver of shimmering blue and pink flicker and disappear. Glancing around to make sure no one’s around, (he hears a few voices talking about the beauty of the area, but although they sound close, sounds in the woods can be deceiving) he climbs over the brush and plants (please god don’t let that be poison ivy) and kneels by Cas.

His energy shield’s intact, but there’s no pathway in sight.

Yeah, this can’t be good.

Cas is laying on his side, eyes droopy, clothes disheveled, wing still injured from his fucking _punishment_. Dean lays a comforting hand on his shoulder, only to feel the electric buzz of the damn shield. He wonders what Cas feels, if anything, when he touches it.

Cas looks up at him, his face only inches away, and Dean stops breathing. It’s not like he’s never found a dude hot before, but Cas…

Dean swallows. _Not the time._ “Are you okay? You look like crap.”

“With no connection to the Lynk, I had no protection from the – turbulence, I guess you’d say, of a badly formed pathway with a destination that was known, but not stable.”

“How’d you get out of that place?” Dean asks.

Cas winces as he tries to push himself into a sitting position. Dean puts his arms around him and helps him, weird-ass-tingling feeling be damned.

“I’m not sure,” he says, wincing, as he finds his balance. He looks up and down at Dean, like he’s surprised to see that he’s still in one piece. “Dean- I wasn’t even sure if I’d gotten you home, or at least to your own planet, or if you were lost in space somewhere that you couldn’t survive. And I didn’t think I had enough power to escape, and then suddenly, I just _did_. But it wasn’t power straight from the Lynk. I wasn’t sure -” He turns his head to look around with wide eyes. “I originally expected to end up in the void.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” Dean numbly states the obvious (as he tries not to think about what _planet_ he could have ended up on if Cas’s aim had been off. Jesus.) He looks over his shoulder as he hears the voices of tourists approaching. “We need to get you out of here.” Dean helps him to his feet, keeping his arm around him.

They avoid the trail and weave back through the trees the same way Dean hiked in. Although the ground is uneven and difficult for Cas to manage in his current condition, Dean knows that average people, seeing a winged creature encased in a giant colored energy field, would probably be traumatized. And traumatized people are unpredictable.

By the time they reach the Impala, dusk is settling in, and shadows are dancing around the landscape. Dean helps the limping angel into his car. His arm and hand are asleep from the constant contact of the energy shield, and although the Impala is large, Cas must wrap his wings awkwardly around him to fit into the car.

*****

Dean hasn’t been at his house in almost a week, but other than a mailbox stuffed full of (mostly junk) mail and the inevitable thin layer of dust covering every surface, everything is as tidy as he left it. Castiel looks warily around the room as Dean deposits him onto his couch. The angel takes a minute to adjust his wings so that he isn’t laying on them, then rests back against the pillows.

He heads to the kitchen for a cold beer, and is about to offer Cas one, when he realizes he can’t drink through his shield. He sighs. Who knows if angels even eat or drink anyway?

Popping the cap off the bottle, he observes the creature sprawled across his couch. His normally bright blue eyes look dull, and he radiates exhaustion, although he told Dean in the Impala that angels don’t need sleep.

“You look awful,” he observes. “You okay in that thing?” He gestures at the energy shield.

Castiel looks up at him wearily. “Being trapped in here – is uncomfortable,” he manages. “But I can stay disconnected from the Lynk for a while.”

“What happens after a while?”

Cas looks at him blankly and says nothing.

Okay then. Dean’s imagination is fairly expansive when it comes to things that could go wrong, and he has to suppress the frankly horrifying images of what could happen after “a while”.

“So what’s keeping you from zapping back to your Lynk, or whatever? Why aren’t you connected to a pathway?”

Cas tries to sit up, and his face contorts with pain. Dean can practically feel it himself, even without seeing Cas clearly through the shield. He rushes over to the couch and crouches in front of Castiel. He reaches up to put a comforting hand on his shoulder and rolls his eyes when he remembers the energy shield, but Cas’s half-smile tells Dean he appreciates the gesture.

“I don’t know. I’m still not entirely sure how I got _here_. The energy I used for the pathway didn’t come directly from the Lynk, and it burned out as I landed here.”

Dean frowns and pulls the coffee table closer. He sits on it, peering intently at Cas’s face. “Does this make any kind of sense to you? You have any idea what happened?”

Cas shifts his wings. The pastel colors flickering through the shield don’t completely dull the deep incandescent blue, purple and green flecks mixed into the ebony feathers. Dean wants nothing more than to bury his fingers in those wings; the feathers look so soft. He wonders how it would feel to lie naked on Cas, with those feathers wrapped around his body, caressing his skin –

“Dean, _I don’t know what happened_.” Cas narrows his eyes and looks at Dean, and Dean belatedly remembers that he and Cas have spoken to each other with their thoughts. Dean swallows nervously and hopes Cas only listens in when he needs to.

“Are _you_ alright?” Cas asks.

Dean’s eyes widen. “Yeah, uh, just - thinking. Sorry, uh, please continue.”

Cas tilts his head and is silent for a (very, very long) moment. He sighs. “I got rid of the tentacles that were coming at us. I flew to a safer place and was considering whether or not to focus on my shield or on forming a pathway for myself so I could follow you. And then . . . then I just – powered up. The energy was just there, so I used it. I sensed you and – aimed in your direction.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You aimed? You mean you - _guessed_?

“My telepathic connection to you is unusually strong. I was able to make a very good – guess.”

“Um, yeah. About that telepathic connection. What exactly can you pick out of my head?”

Cas curls his injured left wing around to his side and flicks it with irritation.

“I can’t pick anything out of your head,” he says, sounding half shy, half irritated. “When you call to me, I can hear you. That is the extent of it.” Cas’s face inexplicably flushes dark pink. “If we were – if you were an angel -”

He cuts himself off. Dean looks at him suspiciously.

“If I were an angel …,” Dean repeats. “Please continue, if you’re blushing this must be good.”

Cas clears his throat. “Usually a connection such as ours – it is extremely rare.” Cas seems to be having trouble finding words. “Catalysts and angels just don’t – normally it is -” Cas’s hands flop into his lap. “A telepathic connection should only be – should only form spontaneously between two angels who are mates.”

“Angels have mates?” Dean asks, eyebrows raised.

Cas glares at him. “That’s the part you’re interested in?”

“It just never occurred to me.” His eyes slowly roam across Cas’s body, his wings, his hair . . . With a combination of jealousy and arousal, he wonders if Cas has been with other angels. _Stop, dammit. You can long for and pine after him all you want, but it’s not possible._

“Have you ever mated?” he asks anyway.

Cas looks at the ground as if he’s embarrassed. “No. I’ve never had occasion.”

Dean’s jealousy fades into relief. _It’s totally not jealousy. But whatever._

“So how did we telepathically connect?” Dean asks.

“I don’t know, Dean. It happened naturally. Our bond simply came into being.”

“Well if this link thing means I’m supposed to be your mate, you’re screwed. I mean how much time do I have left, anyway?”

Cas looks extremely uncomfortable, and Dean regrets the question.

Cas suddenly flinches and squeezes his eyes shut. No sound comes out of his mouth, however; Dean suspects that whatever is happening to him is caused by his separation from the Lynk.

“How can I help?” he asks quietly.

Cas looks up at him from underneath soft long lashes. “I need someplace I can stretch out my wings. They are – the muscles are sore from too much sudden use.”

Oh god, the only place other than the floor for Cas to do that is Dean’s bed. _He’s gonna have to put Cas in his bed._ Cas is going to be _in his bed._

“I can do that,” he manages.

Helping Cas to his bedroom, he notices the way Cas reacts to every sound from outside, how much tension is in his shoulders and neck. As he gently lowers him to the bed, Cas looks around warily.

“You’re afraid,” Dean says softly.

Cas’s eyes narrow as he looks at Dean before looking away.

“I have never been unable to return to my home before,” he admits. “Losing contact with the Lynk is -” He seems to change his mind before continuing. “I have never been trapped in my energy shield. If something were to breach it, I -” After a pause, he says, “Within a few days I should be able to recover and regenerate my power. Until then, I, I -” He throws up his hands in frustration, and Dean wonders why he can’t complete a sentence.

Dean never imagined the powerful angel could look so vulnerable and lost. He sits next to Cas on the bed and leans him back onto the pillows. Cas rolls onto his stomach, wings flaring out around him, and rests his head on the crook of his elbow.

Dean suddenly has a wing in his lap. His fingers are drawn to it like they’ve been magnetized. Ignoring the tingling on his fingertips, he lets them run across the feathers, imagining he can feel the soft texture of the wings in his hands. He strokes along the wing bone and Cas’s breath hitches.

“I’m imaging what your touch would feel like,” Cas says.

“Warm,” Dean says huskily. “My hands are a little rough, but I can be very gentle.”

He palms the joint where the wing meets Cas’s back, then runs his hand with gentle pressure along Cas’s spine. Cas digs his head into the bed.

Dean then softly caresses his hair, imaging its softness, wanting to run his fingers through the unruly mess. But his hands are numbing from so much contact with the shield, and he has to pull away. He gently slides out from beneath Cas’s wing and moves to the edge of the bed.

Once he’s settled, Dean confesses, “I prayed for you. To your friends at the Lynk. I was hoping they would listen.”

Cas turns his head toward Dean. “You – prayed for me?”

Dean looks down at his legs. “I don’t think anyone heard me.”

“The Lynk itself must have heard you. But whatever Barrier separates that realm from reality must have blocked it from doing anything more than to help me power up enough to escape. Whatever power was sent to me must have been dulled.”

“Look, uh,” Dean clears his throat. “You rest and build your power back up or whatever. And, uh, don’t worry about – I mean, I’ll take care of you, okay?”

Cas looks at him with an expression Dean can’t interpret.

“You’re safe here.” Dean looks at him longingly for one last moment before walking out and closing the door.


	9. Chapter 9

Castiel sits bolt upright, panic suffocating him. Light shines through the strange room’s only window, where it had been dark just a second ago. He doesn’t remember where he is or how he got here. As he looks through the screen of the shield’s familiar twisting colors of light, he realizes in confusion that he’s still stuck inside of it, and it’s broadcasting query signals, trying to find and sense the Lynk.

He looks around the room, his disorientation fading as his memories slam back into him. He is in Dean’s home. And apparently, for the first time since his creation thousands of years ago, he has . . . fallen _asleep_.

Castiel looks down at himself. Encased as he is, he can’t even loosen his tie or unbutton the top of his shirt to relieve his feeling of being strangled.

 _Why do humans wear such uncomfortable clothes?_ he wonders.

He squirms in his shield a bit, trying to get somewhat comfortable, but it doesn’t help. His feet hurt. His wings need to be cared for, especially the injured one.

Normally after sealing an Aberration, he returns to his rooms near the Lynk’s control center to relax, groom his wings and meditate. He has not returned to his home in days.

Frowning at himself, he runs his hands down the front of his body, watching the strange molecular interaction of the shield coming into contact with itself. A few of his bangs have fallen across his forehead, and he can’t push them away.

Dean quietly enters the room, and Cas doesn’t realize he’s no longer alone. He jumps when Dean softly asks, “are you okay?”

He is about to lie and tell Dean he’s fine, but Dean’s genuine concern stops him. Castiel isn’t used to people caring about him, other than in his capacity as a soldier with a job to do, useful only when a mission arises that requires his special skills.

He wishes he could see Dean clearly, without the hazy shimmer between them. He can’t, however, so he looks down at the bed instead.

“I’m tired, Dean,” he says softly. “I’ve been doing this job in one capacity or another for a very, _very_ long time. The solitude – the solitude has never bothered me before. But since I’ve met you, everything’s changed. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to bring you back to the Lynk with me, and just _talk_ to you, and learn about you. I want to be able to share experiences with you that aren’t related to any of this.

“There are so many realms, Dean. The places I could take you . . . On _Lee-ah-coo_ glowing butterflies fill the air at night, and the entire sky lights up in orange, gold, green, blue and violet. On _Eh-va-o-nay_ , there are shiny silver seas full of liquid mercury. The entire surface of _Aun_ is covered in quartz crystals, and they split the light of their sun into rainbows that fill the entire atmosphere.”

Dean studies him for a minute, then falls to the bed and pulls Castiel into his arms. The shield buzzes loudly in protest, but Cas doesn’t care, because Dean is _holding_ him. Castiel knows he will never get closer to Dean that this, so he’ll take what he can get. Tentatively, he puts his arms around Dean’s waist.

“Cas, I want those things too,” Dean admits. “You’ve become part of me.” He blushes and laughs. “And I don’t say cheesy shit like that unless it’s true.”

He pulls back and looks at Castiel thoughtfully. “Fuck it,” he mumbles, so softly Cas almost misses it. And before he realizes what’s happening, Dean puts his lips on the shield and presses them against Cas’s.

Cas gasps and pulls back, startled. “Dean, why did you -?”

Dean blinks at him and sighs. “I dunno, man.” He pulls back, to Castiel’s disappointment. “I mean it’s not like it matters, right?” he says bitterly. “I’m gonna explode or whatever, and you’ll go on fixing the Universe or whatever it is you do. I guess I’m just a blip on your radar, huh?”

“Do you really think that?” Cas asks softly. His question is met with silence. Cas puts his hands in his lap. “Can I tell you something?” he asks, looking up at Dean. Dean nods and narrows his eyes.

“The Lynk was created eons ago, when God decided to – take a break, I suppose you would say. Its purpose was to maintain the balance of reality, to create a way to keep the realms stable. It worked perfectly for thousands of years. Then weak spots began to develop. A few molecules began to switch back and forth between realms. Then the weak spots grew larger. Entire objects began to push through. That’s when I was created.”

“Go on,” Dean says.

Cas stretches his wings across the bed. “I was shown the Lynk. The angel Zachariah told me I was created to interact with the energy spiraling within it, which would allow me to enter the Lynk and travel between realms. My purpose was, obviously, to retrieve the leaked objects and return them, thus allowing the tears in the Barriers to heal.

“For centuries, my entire existence focused on fixing the Barriers and meditating. I constantly studied the majority of the Lynk to look for flaws.”

“The majority?” Dean interrupts.

“Yes. Angels are forbidden from entering the center of the Lynk. It is dangerous to us. Only God may go there.”

Cas contemplates for a minute, then shakes his head.

“I also studied the rest of heaven, from - afar, and observed all of creation. I wondered what the rest of heaven was like, but I was never allowed to go and see for myself.” He curls his wings toward himself.

Dean raises an eyebrow but decides not to pursue the topic of why Cas is apparently banned from the rest of heaven. At least not yet. Instead he asks, “what about friends? Or at least, I don’t know, coworkers? Didn’t you ever just talk to someone? Or, I dunno, hang out? I mean, I know you said you haven’t ever been laid, but don’t you have _anyone?_ ”

“I do have what you would call – coworkers. My team. Hannah and Rachel. And I guess you could say that we’re – friends. But they spend their time studying the voids within the Barriers, trying to find objects and now people that are lost within. I help give them direction, but most of the time I work alone.”

“No wonder you’re lonely,” Dean murmurs.

Cas frowns. “I haven’t really had time to -” Cas cuts himself off suddenly and stares straight ahead with wide, terrified eyes. A cold chill ripples through Dean. “Cas, what is it?” he asks in a low voice. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He assumes Cas has regained some of his power, because his shield is pulsing right now. Cas’s expression is anything but happy, however.

“Cas?”

Without completely surfacing from the trance he’s in, he looks at Dean and says, “We have a problem.”

  



	10. Chapter 10

When the Lynk senses a new Aberration is about to form, Castiel feels it; the knowledge seeps into him like water soaks into sand. He knows the location and what (or who) is crossing over. He also feels whether or not a Catalyst is near enough to guide the pathway safely across the void.

At the moment, waves of images from his partially restored connection are showing him an Aberration that is

not only exponentially larger than the others, it is hovering in space directly over the Earth. And unlike any other Aberration that has ever existed throughout time, this one is under someone’s control. Perhaps a new Catalyst has pulled it through to this realm and somehow learned to control it? Castiel doubts it. An Aberration this large is likely capable of affecting the earth’s orbit. It is certainly able to damage this realm beyond his ability to repair.

Whatever it’s looking for, nothing good will happen when it finds it.

Cas sucks in a breath. His unfocused eyes close as his fists clench. All this time, he’d thought the Aberrations were random occurrences. Now he wonders how many of them were formed on purpose, with the singular goal of destroying reality bit by bit, hoping the small Aberrations would go unnoticed until it was too late.

He’s willing to bet the recent Aberrations now focused on Earth were formed there deliberately. The question is, why?

Finding out who’s responsible will not be easy. On consideration, there’s no way a catalyst acting alone could pull this off. Right now, however, they have bigger problems. Dean cannot simply travel to _this_ Aberration; Castiel will have to teleport him directly inside of it. Worse, Dean may not even be able to affect it; whoever is controlling this Aberration is extremely powerful, and their power will likely override Dean’s. In the extremely unlikely event his energy _could_ guide it, Dean would still have to find a way to return the pathway to its point of origin, back through the Barrier, so Castiel could seal the hole in Dean’s realm. Castiel has no idea what realm the Aberration originated from; it could have beings more dangerous than the tentacle creatures Dean called spidopus, or worse, the atmosphere could be inhospitable to human life.

“Cas?” Dean asks again, and this time he looks genuinely worried. He puts his hand on Cas’s arm, ignoring the now familiar buzz, and Cas looks up at him.

“An Aberration has appeared that is capable of destroying the Earth.”

Dean blinks. “Oh, well, I’m glad it’s nothing major.”

“Dean, the Lynk sent me this vision. As we speak, the Aberration is searching for the best location to begin pulling the earth out of its realm -”

“It’s doing _what_?

 “– and we are nowhere near it.”

“Great, so where -”

Castiel cuts him off. “There’s more.”

“Of course there is,” Dean mumbles.

“Dean, an – intelligence – seems to be controlling the Aberrations.”

Castiel watches as Dean’s expression goes from shock to fear to anger.

“I think that’s how we ended up outside of reality,” he continues. “It was an attack, meant to prevent us from closing the tears in the Barriers. I also believe whoever is behind this is gaining strength. This is the largest Aberration I’ve ever seen.”

“So they’re just gonna, what, suck the Earth down some pathway? Son of a bitch! Why this planet? Are they doing this to other realms?”

“I don’t know. Earth is currently the only destination for the human Leakers, although they are coming from everywhere in reality.”

“So what do we do?” Dean asks.

Castiel looks at him, trying desperately to see him as just the Catalyst, not the person that is slowly becoming his whole world. It would make this a lot easier.

“You have to stop it, Dean. With the extremely high level of energy you possess – you may be able to lead it back to wherever it came from before it destroys your planet. But since we don’t know which realm it came from – you will have to go inside of it and follow the pathway back across, hopefully to its realm of origin. With any luck it will sense your energy and follow you back, like the other one did. However -” Cas closes his eyes. “If this Aberration plans to remove the earth from this realm, it will likely try to dump it into the void, rather than pulling it all the way through the Barrier and disrupting its own realm.”

“So this is a one way trip to hell,” Dean says evenly.

Cas stares at the ground intently, trying to ignore the pressure building in his chest. “I don’t know. Once it senses you, the pathway may simply leave the earth alone and return to its own realm, spitting you out into – wherever it came from.”

“Which could be outer fucking space,” Dean intones.

“Or it could reform and try to reach Earth again. Or – with the intense amount of energy you will be releasing into an Aberration that is already too large to be stable . . . it could explode.”

Dean blows out a breath. “Gotta tell you, Cas, I was just getting resigned to the whole ‘my- energy- is- gonna- blow- me- up’ thing.”

“It’s our only chance, Dean. If the entity responsible for this has become strong enough to attempt displacing entire planets from one realm to another, we cannot hope to retrieve them if they succeed. If you fail, all is lost.”

Dean looks at Castiel expressionlessly. “At least, something this important, - you’ll be there with me?” Dean asks quietly. “Right, Cas?”

“I can only do so much. I’m not a Catalyst, and I’m not strong enough yet to go with you. I can get you there, but I cannot be of further help until I power up more.”

Dean gets up and walks toward the door before turning around to face Cas. His eyes are full of fury. Cas freezes.

“So I need to somehow get this pathway out of my realm and hope it doesn’t re-form and come back, and if I don’t succeed, my Universe will destabilize and kill who knows how many people. At which point my options include exploding or getting spit into outer space. And you will be sitting here the whole time doing absolutely nothing, because you’re too _weak_ to help.”

Cas flinches. “Dean -”

“You are one soulless son of a bitch, you know that? I though we-” Dean shakes his head, the corner of his mouth quirking ironically. “Must be nice not to have feelings. No wonder you’re always alone.”

Cas’s eyes fall closed.

“Man, I get that I need to do this. I accepted this godforsaken fate as soon as you told me what I was. But tell me something. Once I get this done – and I _will_ get it done – what happens then? Once I’m gone, who’s going to be here to save your precious reality?”

Cas answers quietly, “Another Catalyst will take your place.”

Dean snorts. “Ah, well, that’s convenient for you, isn’t it?”

“Dean -”

“You coward! You send me off to do your dirty work while you do nothing!”

Cas looks achingly at Dean. “I _can’t_ -”

“Screw you. Get me to your fucking Aberration. Let’s get this done.”

“Dean, I would give anything -”

“Just do it!” Dean barks.

Desperately trying to ignore Dean’s words, Cas focuses on the Aberration from his vision. His power from the Lynk is still not up to capacity, and what little of his grace has recharged may not be enough to transport Dean. Getting him inside that pathway, transporting him to one specific location, is much more difficult than simply sending someone back to their realm. It doesn’t matter to a Leaker’s survival if they don’t end up in the exact spot they came from. But if he is at all off when he sends Dean, he could end up floating in space.

Reluctantly, Cas touches Dean’s forehead through his shield, ignoring Dean’s expression of disgust and the way his own heart is ripping apart. Cas’s grace wraps around Dean, and Cas teleports him as far into the pathway as possible, accessing every bit of his remaining power that he can.

As Dean disappears, Cas drops to the floor, unable to move.

*****

Dean lands on his ass in the swirling mass of energy in the Aberration. The coppery taste of blood coats his tongue where he bit into it. Struggling to get his hands to hold him up on a not entirely stable surface, he manages to get himself upright, just as a stinging slap of water splashes against him. Looking back through the opening of the Aberration, he sees that it has moved inside the Earth’s atmosphere and is beginning to suck up the ocean like a vacuum cleaner. A wave of disbelief nearly knocks him over, and is not helped at all when an entire school of small pink fish flies past him toward the opposite end of the pathway.

He wonders what the poor bastards on earth must be seeing.

Then he thinks of Cas. The regret, desperation, and – something else on his face. Dean had called him soulless, and a coward, but those things couldn’t be farther from the truth, and the look on his face . . .

He tells himself it doesn’t matter, not anymore. He concentrates on the energy building inside of him, wondering how he could have lived his entire life without knowing what he was. When he feels his power peaking, he instinctively launches it toward the end of the pathway, riding with it like a bird in a storm being carried across the sky. The Aberration attaches clumsily to his energy stream. Dean feels something that can only be described as a cloud of evil push through him as the pathway collapses back into the realm it was born in, dumping Dean out unceremoniously into the void.

*****

Cas awakens on the wooden floor of Dean’s bedroom. His body protected itself by shutting down before his newly recovered Grace expended itself completely. With difficulty he focuses on his vision of the Aberration. The sky is empty. Dean succeeded. But Cas doesn’t feel any trace of him at all in his mind.

_Dean. Where are you?_

Cas forces himself on to his elbows. His connection to the Lynk is still weak, but his need to get to Dean is not. If he can get to the Lynk’s control center, he can search for Dean, and he can recharge completely. With the residual Grace that was protected when he fainted, he focuses intently on the Lynk. The pathway he manages to create is unstable, and in some places, it’s weak enough it could expose him to the void.

He enters it anyway.

Later, he will think it was a combination of will power and sheer dumb luck that got him home.

Finally freeing himself from the shield is one of the best feelings he’s had in a very long time. He loosens his tie and runs a hand through his hair (and finally pushes the bangs off his forehead) as he heads to the control center. He needs to tend to his wing, but time is short, and all he cares about right now is Dean.

As he frantically searches realm after realm, he realizes he could literally spend forever trying to find Dean. He is actually willing to do just that, but Dean won’t survive that long, so he needs a better plan.

*****

Dean recognizes this place; it’s the same absolute nothingness of the void he pulled the lavender-skinned Leaker by the river out of. His energy has surrounded him, coating him the way Cas’s shield does; he feels the dull buzz like he’s inside a speaker that is turned on but has no music flowing through it.

 _I’m going to die alone in this fucking hole,_ he thinks desperately. _Jesus. Sam. Sam has no idea what I’ve been doing. He has no idea I’ve left my job, no idea I’ve been following an actual angel all over the entirety of- well, everything._

_He has no idea reality is collapsing around him._

_You can’t panic,_ he tells himself. Taking stock of his situation, he realizes he’s not cold, and the absolute darkness is not entirely – absolute. He sees the barest hint of bluish white light in the distance.

Dean tries without success to move forward or backward, up or down. His inability to mobilize is not exactly helping him to not panic. He can move his arms and legs a little, but the movements are useless. He screams for Cas, but the sound echoes around inside his energy cocoon. He is very alone, and it is very dark. He wonders how long it will take him to go insane.


	11. Chapter 11

Cas realizes the futility of randomly searching realm to realm through the Lynk. It was a dumb idea anyway, he admits, born of desperation. He needs a smarter plan. He goes to his rooms and paces. Dean has not responded to his telepathic probing, but maybe something is blocking their connection.

Nestling himself into the pillows on his floor, he wraps his wings around himself and closes his eyes. Instead of trying to communicate, he focuses instead on simply _finding_ him. He doesn’t have to search every _place_ ; all he has to do is exclude the minds of every living entity in existence and hone in on the distinct feeling of Dean.

The task is not difficult; it’s like picking out a blue marble from a pile of red ones.

Minutes pass and there is still no trace of Dean. It’s impossible for him to not find Dean’s mind in the sea of reality. But he’s simply _not there._

Startled, Cas realizes the only way Dean’s mind could be eluding him was if he wasn’t _in_ reality. He could have stood at the Lynk and searched realm to realm forever and it would have been useless.

Dean’s inside the Barrier.

*****

Castiel jumps through the Barrier on a wave of light and power, having siphoned energy from the Lynk. The darkness is even more overwhelming than he expected. The bluish glow of grace filling his eyes allows him to see outlines of the suspended objects and people currently trapped inside the Barrier. The bodies of the people in stasis seem to be unharmed, but there is nothing in the void to break them down or cause decay, so that really doesn’t mean much. A fresh sting of panic hits him.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think this place was an offshoot of hell.

Cas creates a celestial wave through the nothingness out of his grace. The wave acts as a sort of trail that he can follow by using his wings to propel him along. He searches quickly through the area where he arrived, hoping Dean is close. Technically, Dean shouldn’t be alive. Cas feels a flicker of connection to him, but the telepathy cannot tell him Dean’s location; Dean has no context to know where he is himself, let alone communicate it even if he did. Even so, Castiel is not leaving the darkness without him.

The objects he finds as he searches range from the mundane to the downright disturbing. It’s difficult to grasp how something as small as a hairbrush falling between realms could possibly make a difference in the balance of reality, but he knows the combined effect of all the leaked objects is substantial. And when you include human beings, the effect becomes exponential. As Castiel travels through the maze of objects and people he grows more and more discouraged.

He can sense that time runs differently here; apparently the absence of everything affects that, too. Hours seem to have passed, maybe days, and there’s still no sign of Dean.

As he continues searching, noting and committing to memory the variety of objects floating aimlessly through the dark insides of the Barrier, he begins to see a familiar silver-colored light. As he moves closer, the light becomes brighter, and he comes to a dead stop as the light takes shape. In front of him looms a miniature version of the Lynk ( _perhaps an offspring? That isn’t possible_ ). He watches in fascination as tiny balls of light emerge from the Lynk-like entity and separate themselves from it, then head for the walls of Earth’s portion of the Barrier. Cas’s fascination turns to horror as they begin to burrow through and disappear.

So that’s what’s creating the breakdown of the Barriers. The only question now is, is someone controlling this miniature Lynk, or is it controlling itself?

He watches helplessly as more balls of light separate and create another hole on the opposite side of the first one. They’re tearing into another realm to create an Aberration toward Earth. As the Barrier is torn open a second time, a swirling tunnel is created from the realm that is not Earth, growing larger and attempting to find its way to the hole leading to Earth. As the rapidly expanding pathway bumps against the barrier, it fails to find the opposite opening; apparently no Catalyst has appeared on earth to replace Dean.

Without warning, a person from the non-earth realm is sucked through the pathway and spit out into the void. Cas alters the direction of his wave and lunges forward, stretching his wings, grabbing for the unmoving body. The person looks very similar to the humans on earth, except for the additional bundle of fingers at the elbows. If he can get to him, send him back to his own realm before the pathway closes -  but he’s too late; the person has already been cocooned in a stasis field. Immediately the errant pathway shoots off across the void.

Castiel realizes it must have sensed Dean’s energy. He now has a way to find him.

  



	12. Chapter 12

“Cas? _Cas!_ ” _Son of a bitch. Where the fuck are you?_ Dean can’t hear or feel him in his head at all. The emptiness filling the space where Cas should be is weirdly uncomfortable; he hadn’t realized how reliant he’d become on a connection with someone he could never touch in any other way.

He tries shouting with his mind again (mostly obscenities but Cas’ll figure it out). He just doesn’t know enough about the Barriers or the void to know if a telepathic message will even be able to find Cas. Or worse, if another telepathic person or angel could receive the message. Or intercept it.

He sees the sliver of light in the distance begin to flicker.

Dean thinks, _did I imagine that?_ Squinting into the darkness reveals very little, and he’s about to write it off as wishful thinking, when he feels a tickle in the back of his brain. It’s distracting, and annoying, and suddenly he recognizes it, although it’s muted.

 _Son of a bitch, it must be Cas_. _‘Bout fucking time._

Another flash of light breaks through the darkness. It’s closer this time.

Cas. It has to be. Cas has found him.

Within seconds the light becomes constant, and Dean sighs in relief. The light is recognizably that of an angel. The silver has become the same shimmery blue-white that sometimes outlines Cas’s wings and head, as if there’s too much energy to contain within himself and it’s trying to push its way out.

His entire visual spectrum fills with the light of angel Grace, and Dean is still grinning as he’s drawn from the void.

*****

Castiel continues along the wave, following the Aberration. As he travels he watches from the corner of his eye as other little pockets of light make their way from the mini-Lynk and burrow into other realms. They are the beginnings of Aberrations that will try and reach back toward Earth, and he has no idea how to make them stop. The pockets of light resemble tiny bugs, like termites eating through the Barriers. He finally, _finally_ feels Dean’s mind, although it is a very weak connection. He wills the wave to move faster, and at long last he sees Dean ahead of him.

_Dean!_

With a surge of grace, he lunges toward him. The pathway, guided by Dean’s energy, follows him as he disappears into a sea of grace that shouldn’t be there. The pathway follows Dean as he disappears from the void.

*****

Dean blinks rapidly at the glaring change in scenery. As black and empty as the void was, he is now in a brightly lit room.  Not that there are any actual _lights_ anywhere, the place just fucking _glows_. Billowy curtains in the familiar iridescent colors create walls all around him. Dean actually feels solid ground under his feet, but his energy field is still wrapped protectively around his body. He turns around, grinning, expecting to see Cas; instead, his relief turns to horror when he sees Zach. His fucking ex-boss.

Dean’s mind refuses to process the sight of Zach in front of him. Zach rescuing him from the void makes no sense at all. And where the hell is Cas?

“Well, Dean, I have to say I was not expecting you to follow this path,” he says conversationally. “Even when you left your job, and fuck you for that by the way, I didn’t expect you to actually go around undoing my hard work! Bit of an inconvenience, that.”

Dean is still trying to process that fucking _Zach_ is standing in front of him.

“What the hell are you talking about? What hard work?”

Horrified, Dean realizes the Grace he felt in the void, the grace he’d assumed belonged to Cas, must actually belong to Zach. There’s no one else around.

Which means Zach is an angel.

“How could a dick like you possibly be an angel?” Dean blurts, baffled.

Zach laughs, but his eyes are cold.

“I’m happy to see you’re catching up, Dean.” He sighs dramatically. “You’re always so lost in the moment, you’re never able to see the big picture,” he says. “But you’ll learn.”

Dean glares at him. “I’ll learn? So this is what, heaven’s torture chamber?”

“This isn’t heaven!” he snaps, his calm, sarcastic façade slipping. “Those ungrateful winged monkeys don’t think I _belong_ there, so they kicked me out. But I’ll show ‘em. I’m making my own heaven! A new and improved version, you might say.”

“Son of a bitch. You’re even crazier than I thought you were.”

Zach scowls and takes a step toward Dean. “ _I’m_ crazy? _Me_? I’m not the one who -” He stops abruptly and tilts his head like he’s listening to something. A second later he says, “I have important matters to check up on. Make yourself at home.” Smirking, he teleports from the room.

Dean is left alone with a feeling that he, along with all of reality, might just be deeply and irrevocably screwed.

*****

Castiel feels Dean’s presence lingering where he escaped the void. He was _so close_. Although it takes only milliseconds to push through the barrier, it feels like forever to Cas.

_Hold on Dean. I’m coming. If I have to, I will tear down the Universe to find you._

Cas is so intent on getting to Dean that he doesn’t immediately realize that he’s followed him to a familiar place. His energy shield dissipates as he stares numbly ahead at the hazy edges of the room. It’s the torture chamber where Raphael last disciplined him.

“Cas?” asks a tentative voice.

Eyes widening, he turns around and freezes. Dean is standing in front of him. The energy he radiates is humming lightly around him. Taut facial muscles relax as his eyes rest on Cas. He looks unhurt. Somehow, he has survived.

Cas takes a breath and walks toward him. For the first time, he is seeing Dean as he is, without the blurry colors of his shield distorting him. Dean is still wrapped in his own energy, which is protecting him from the coldness of this realm on the outside of heaven. Cas traces his fingers along Dean’s face, still unable to feel his skin although this time it’s _Dean’s_ energy that’s between them, and the irony is not lost on Cas. Still, he can _see_ him, and Cas drinks in the details of his face: the long lashes sweeping over dark green eyes, the gently defined cheekbones, the freckles - Dean has _freckles._

Self-consciously he thinks of his torn wing (which is bleeding yet again), his hair which is sticking out all over like he’s been electrocuted (with the exception of the stray bangs that won’t stay out of his eyes), the faded bruises on his face. . . This is the first time Dean has seen him clearly also. He must be sorely disappointed, Castiel thinks.

“Cas,” he says in a rough voice. “I can’t believe it’s really you. I can’t believe I can actually see you. You -” Dean’s voice breaks on the last words as his eyes roam hungrily over Castiel. “Say something, man, I’m feeling a little weird here.”

“Dean?” Castiel swallows and tries to remember what words are. “You are – okay? How did you survive the void? How did you create a shield from your energy? You -you should be dead! How can you possibly be here? I – I didn’t think you’d be alive.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Don’t sound so thrilled about it.”

Cas narrows his eyes. He tilts his head to study Dean. “Dean, why would you think-”

“Forget it. Where the hell are we? And who the hell is Zachariah?”

“Zachariah?” Cas repeats with both alarm and disbelief.

“Yeah, he’s the dick that pulled me in here. Cas, I know him. He was my boss on earth.”

Cas looks around frantically. “Dean, we have to leave, now.”

Before Dean can respond, another voice fills the air.

“Well, I’m happy to say, in spite of your interference, everything is going as planned.” Zachariah has materialized just a few feet from the two of them, smiling tauntingly. Cas automatically moves to place himself in front of Dean, but Zachariah casually raises his hand and makes a flicking motion, and Castiel flies across the room. He lands clumsily; his arms and legs sprawl out flat on the ground, and he is unable to keep his face from smashing into the floor.

“Cas!” he hears Dean shout, but the sounds abruptly stop as an invisible force cuts off Dean’s airway. From the corner of his eye, Castiel sees Dean gasp and grab his throat, sinking to the floor. As he struggles to breathe, Zachariah sighs like he is bored.

“I’ve been planning this for a long time. It’s the ultimate act of revenge: irreversible, completely devastating to the guilty parties, and foolproof. I mean, you two came along and tried to screw everything up for me; that was definitely unexpected. I couldn’t possibly have planned for that contingency. But - no worries. Everything is back on schedule.” His voice is slow and melodic, as if he’s performing a drama in a theatre full of people.

Zachariah swirls his finger in a circle and releases his hold on Dean’s neck, but Dean slumps forward instead of getting up. Castiel hears him breathe in deeply and sighs with relief, but the relief is short-lived.

Dean cries out in agony.

Zachariah chuckles. “I’ve filled your stomach with chunks of rock, Dean. I thought I’d do a little scientific experiment. I want to see what you die from first: bleeding out when your stomach ruptures or from blood poisoning when the uranium ore in the rocks leaks into your bloodstream. Oh, and uh, there’s a quartz crystal in there blocking anything from coming out. I added that in for fun, just to see what would happen.”

“Undo what you’ve done to him,” Cas growls, as he puts every ounce of strength he has into lifting his head from the ground. He ignores the horrible pain and pressure wrapping around his neck.

“Ah, Castiel, I almost forgot you were there!” Zachariah taunts with faint (and fake) amusement.

“You are responsible,” Cas says slowly, “for destabilizing reality. Why?” Cas struggles to hold his head up, but Zachariah slams his face down again with his mojo. Dean unleashes an impressive string of swear words when Cas’s nose breaks.

“Of course you would side with humanity,” Zachariah says disgustedly, carefully enunciating each syllable. “You always were a disgrace, yet _I’m_ the one they kicked out of heaven. All I wanted was a little respect. Well, and a new world order, but is that such a bad thing?”

“You did it, didn’t you,” Castiel says with a mixture of horror and awe. “You went into the Lynk. To the heart. That’s why they banished you. You went all the way in, and you came out insane.”

“Insane?” he says, exaggerating the word across an entire octave. “Oh no. I’m the one who will _return_ sanity, to all of existence. When the mini-Lynk recreates reality, I’ll make sure it’s done right this time. And everyone will bow to me.” 

“Recreates reality,” Dean repeats. “Oh, that’ll end well.”

“And what,” Cas says, raising his head a few inches off the floor, “do you think revenge will get you? It certainly won’t get you back into heaven.”

Castiel sees Dean wince. Cas can sense his pain, and it is horrible.

“You think this is about _revenge?_ ” He laughs, but without humor. “Revenge would hardly be enjoyable. None of you will be alive to see it, Castiel! This is about restoring our Father’s creation! Haven’t you noticed the way your pet monkeys have destroyed all that is beautiful and perfect about everything in existence?” He sneers. “Of course you haven’t. You’ve been too busy bowing to them, wallowing in the dirt with them.”

“You are acting like Lucifer,” Cas monotones. “And things didn’t work out so well for him. Maybe you noticed.”

Zachariah loses his tenuous hold on his temper. He lifts Cas through the air like a rag doll and brings him to stand before him. Cas is helpless to defend himself when Zachariah begins punching him; Zach’s using his power to restrain him. Somewhere in the background he hears Dean calling Zach a cowardly piece of shit.

“So, the end of all reality, huh? I’d have thought you’d go for something a little flashier.” Dean, to Castiel’s horror, seems to have lost his ability to use common sense (in other words to not provoke Zach even more). Cas’s eye (the one that’s not swollen shut from Zach attacking him before Dean distracted him just now) focuses on the horrifying way Dean is sliding himself across the floor toward the two angels. “Not a lot of people even know this shit’s happening, Zach. If you’re trying to make a name for yourself, you’re in for a surprise. And while we’re at it, I gotta say, you picked a pretty inefficient way to destroy existence.”

Dean spits a horrifying stream of deep red blood onto the floor, gurgles, then coughs up some more while Zachariah laughs.

“Don’t you get it? Efficiency is irrelevant. Assured destruction is the endgame, it’s all that matters.”

“If we’re all going to die anyway, there’s no reason for you to keep Dean prisoner,” Castiel grits out, trying to ignore how ridiculous his own nasally voice sounds. He thinks there may be bits of bone crushed into his sinuses. “Fix him and let him go.”

Zachariah’s maniacal laughter is unnerving.

“How do you intend to survive, Zach?” Castiel asks out of sheer morbid curiosity. A fresh stream of warm blood trickles onto his lip. “When the mini-Lynk finally brings about the end of days, how will you keep from getting caught up in the melee of all the realms colliding and mixing together?”

Zachariah’s face is like a caricature of incredulity, staring at Castiel like he’s a glass vase at a brick throwing party. “I will go back inside the Lynk and wait while all of existence collapses, and I will emerge unscathed as reality starts over. Think of it as a reboot. Version 2. It can be done correctly this time!” He swipes his hand through the air. “Everything that’s ugly in existence will be wiped away.”

“Then obviously you’re not gonna survive, so why bother?” Dean says cheerfully before collapsing into unconsciousness.

“Dean!”

“Enough of this!” booms a deep voice nearby.

For the first time in eons, Castiel is very happy to see Raphael.

Zachariah, however, is not. Cas watches with fascination as panic, terror, and anger all crowd across Zach’s face. He sees a flash of silver appear in Raphael’s hand. Raphael moves too quickly for Dean to see, but Cas watches him move to within inches of Zach and point the angel blade at his neck.

“You are not welcome here, Zachariah,” Raphael says calmly.

Raphael’s attention flickers over to Castiel and then Dean. With a wave of his hand and a high pitched ringing noise, Raphael’s Grace heals them both. Castiel rushes to Dean, who is slowly regaining consciousness.

In the split second that Raphael’s attention wavers, Zachariah’s own angel blade slips into his hand, and he slices a jagged ribbon across Raphael’s chest. Raphael staggers backward in surprise, dropping his weapon as whitish blue light erupts from the wound. Zachariah, having the upper hand, swipes at Raphael’s head, but Raphael is ready for him this time and drops out of the way. Zachariah stumbles, and Raphael kicks the blade from his hand before wrapping long fingers around his throat.

“The first time you were told to leave, we asked nicely,” Raphael says in his deep, unwavering voice. “This time we will make sure you don’t come back.”

Despite Raphael’s hold on him, Zachariah laughs. “You seem to think you can threaten me.” He twists powerfully out of Raphael’s grasp, and with surprising agility, lunges low and knocks him to the ground. He reaches for his blade, and it flies into his hand. Raphael’s eyes burn with blue light, and fury briefly twists his features before he regains his calm demeanor. Leaping to his feet, he throws himself at Zachariah, who blocks the attack and sends Raphael sliding backward fast enough to give him whiplash if he’d been human.

“Oh, I may have failed to mention. The mini-Lynk has been sharing its power with me. It’s quite anxious to see the end of days.”

Raphael lunges for his blade, but Zachariah grabs his arm and spins him around to face him. He raises his blade. “Goodbye, Raphael.”

A low pitched hum fills the air. Castiel watches as Dean’s body, glowing with blue energy, shoots arcs of light at the fighting angels. They’re blown to opposite sides of the room. Castiel rushes to fight at Raphael’s side, and the two of them rush at Zachariah. He’s been weakened by Dean’s attack, unlike Raphael who seems to have absorbed the energy and gained strength from it. Zach struggles and begins chanting unfamiliar words as Castiel pins him to the ground. The mini-Lynk’s power again flows toward Zachariah, but Raphael raises his hand and the much greater power of heaven flows through him. Castiel holds onto Zachariah and Raphael smites him. Meanwhile, Dean’s energy powers down and he bends in half, hands on his hips, breathing heavily. Zachariah falls to the ground, dead.

*****

Castiel rushes to Dean and puts a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”

Dean looks up at Castiel’s concerned face. “Yeah,” he grins. “Never felt better.” Standing, he takes in the disheveled angel. “You okay?”

Castiel’s eyes rake over him, inspecting him for injuries. Dean suspects he’s checking him out a little more intensely than necessary. He doesn’t mind at all.

A booming voice interrupts the moment. “Reality has reached a critical point in its destabilization. The Lynk is … slowing down. The two of you have work to do.”

Castiel and Dean look at each other longingly before Raphael continues. “The two of you must return to the void. This mini-Lynk must be deactivated before everything we know ceases to exist.”

“Uh, we’re just, well, _us_. How can we possibly stop the destruction of the Universe?” Dean asks.

“Realms,” whispers Castiel. “Not Universe”.

Dean rolls his eyes and Raphael glares at them. “Dean’s remaining energy is powerful enough to render the mini-Lynk inactive. Castiel, you will guide his energy.”

“So I just show up and my magic juice saves allthe _realms_?” Dean glares at Raphael. “Why was I chosen for this crap? What the hell’s so special about me? Where did this magical energy of mine even come from?”

Raphael sighs and rolls his eyes as if taking a few minutes to explain is a tragic waste of his time. “We don’t have time for you to question orders. You must -”

“I’m not doing anything until you give me an explanation,” Dean tells him evenly.

“He has a right to know everything we know,” Castiel adds quietly.

Raphael’s eyes shoot quiet daggers at Castiel before turning to Dean. With an extraordinarily condescending sigh, he says, “When Zachariah was – asked to leave – we fully intended to keep an eye on him. We suspected something like this could happen, although we never could have imagined anything on this scale. But he evaded us.

“We noticed an increase in the usual number of Aberrations. We couldn’t pin it on any one cause. We began to increase our monitoring of the Lynk, and the more we looked, the worse it seemed to get. We began to suspect that Zachariah was behind it, but we were still unable to find him. Then he began to draw actual people into his world - your earth.”

Castiel explains, “The Aberrations that appear naturally are small – sometimes only a few molecules slip through. For something with the size and mass of a person to slip through on its own is simply not naturally possible.”

Dean remains expressionless. “That still doesn’t tell me why I’m the only one who can fix it.”

“A number of people inherently have the energy to repair the minor tears in the barriers that naturally occur,” Raphael says impatiently. “When Zachariah began to pull people through, he knew a Catalyst would appear. He discovered you, Dean, and he knew he would need to watch you and make sure you couldn’t repair the damage he was causing. So he took over the mechanic shop you worked at.”

“You’re telling me -” Dean’s voice changes into something dark and menacing as he realizes what this means. “Are you telling me he killed – Zach killed my boss so he could take over the shop? To watch me?”

“What he didn’t suspect – and couldn’t have predicted – was how powerful you would be.” Castiel says softly. “Again, why? Why me? What makes me so special?” Dean demands.

“The Lynk has been boosting your power,” Cas says. “This has never happened before in all of time. We can only assume it was – self-preservation. The Lynk needed you.”

“When heaven figured out what was happening, we sent Castiel to retrieve you. Shortly thereafter, I created the telepathic connection between the two of you. When you are finished with the mission, we will break the connection. If you wish, we can also wipe your memories, and you will forget any of this ever happened.”

Castiel feels as if he’s been punched in the gut. He looks from Raphael to Dean, and winces at the look on Dean’s face.

“I was under the impression the telepathy thing was natural,” Dean says in an ominously quiet voice. His face is perfectly expressionless as he asks, “did you know about this, Cas? Cause I’m pretty sure you said our connection was _natural_.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” barks Raphael. “The only connections that happen spontaneously are those between mates. _Angel_ mates. Castiel knows this.”

Castiel closes his eyes. This can’t be happening. He was so sure . . . so convinced that something existed between Dean and him. How could he have failed to realize Raphael was behind it? The way he knows Dean’s feelings, the closeness, security, the sense of _rightness,_ it’s all so intense. How could it possibly have been artificially created?

“It is irrelevant, anyhow,” Raphael continues, and Castiel flinches at the look of betrayal on Dean’s face.

 _I didn’t know, Dean, I swear,_ Cas thinks at him. Dean closes his eyes and shakes his head.

_Fuck you, Cas. You lied to me._

“It is time to return you to the void. You will know what to do.”

With a sound of whooshing wings, Michael and Gabriel appear. Castiel is unsurprised to see them, but he’s really not in the mood to deal with them.

“So you’re the famous Dean-o,” Gabriel says cheerfully. He ignores the death glare Dean shoots in his direction and turns his attention to the other angels next to him. “Ready boys?” he asks.

The two new arrivals join with Raphael, and they stand in a circle, facing inward. They each lift their hands and begin forming a crackling, electric ball of light in the center of them.

“Shield your eyes,” Castiel tells Dean, who scowls back at him but complies.

Raphael’s voice ruminates over the high-pitched scream of grace powering up. “You will not survive this, Dean. Your body is not built to withstand the kind of energy you’ll be expending. I assume Castiel has explained this to you so you could settle your affairs on earth.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard this speech already.”

“Rest assured, a place has been prepared for you in heaven, and you will spend eternity in comfort.” Raphael returns his attention to the others’ efforts.

“Great. Looking forward to it. Can we get on with this already?” Dean snaps, but Raphael and the others are too deeply entranced with their work to hear him.

Glowing light rises above the three angels’ heads and surrounds Raphael, who now looks like he’s blazing with bluish white flames. Dean ducks and covers his eyes with one hand, and Castiel sees Raphael disappear behind the outpouring of Grace. He feels a touch on his shoulder, then finds himself floating in the void with Dean.

The bluish white light pulses around both of them, and Castiel realizes Raphael has used his own grace to shield them from the void, presumably so they won’t get distracted or waste their own resources. The power created by the three angels has created a sort of shadowy substance that is spreading out into the void, shaping itself against the edges of the barriers.

“What the hell are we supposed to be doing, huh?” Dean looks around at the emptiness before resting his eyes on Cas.

“I believe we simply - aim - your energy along the substance my brothers created. I’m not sure, but I believe you will be like - a match lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite.”

“Then let’s do it,” Dean says without emotion.

“Dean -”

“I don’t wanna hear it, Cas.”

“I _believed_ it was – is - a genuine connection, Dean!” Cas says frantically. “All I was told was that you are my mission and my responsibility.” Somehow, he’s got to make him understand.

“Well, it’s good to know where I stand.”

“No, that’s not -I thought – Dean I thought that we-”

“Let’s get this done.”

Cas watches helplessly as Dean’s bluish energy builds within him and surges to the surface. His muscles tighten, every hair on his body stands up, and he vibrates, resonating with the power that will kill Zach’s psychotic plan. Dean is right: they need to get this done. Castiel projects reassurance and soothing thoughts to Dean, then begins to carefully extract Dean’s energy cell by cell and direct it into the wave of grace.

A rumbling noise starts up elsewhere in the void, barely audible over the shrill thrum of grace.

_It knows. It feels our attack._

The mini-Lynk pushes them backward, and suddenly he and Dean are like leaves clinging to a tree in hurricane force winds. As the mini-Lynk hurtles toward them, the sound it generates gets louder and louder, and Castiel feels the force of its emotion. It _reeks_ of malice and fury. The energy he’s attacking with is slowing it down, but it remains unharmed. He needs more power, right now. Impulsively, he psychically reaches toward the Lynk, using his own grace to merge with its energy and pull it into the void.

 _Cas! What do you think you’re doing?_ Dean shouts in his mind.

Cas doesn’t answer; all of his energy is focused on stopping the oncoming attack and neutralizing the mini-Lynk.

 _Cas?_ Dean cries out. Cas wonders what he’s seeing that makes him sound so hysterical.

The Lynk responds with great enthusiasm. Cas directs its destructive power to attack the mini-Lynk. His body feels like it’s burning from the inside out. No angel can hold this amount of pure power flowing straight from the heart of the Lynk for very long, but Cas adamantly refuses to let the ball of _actual evil energy_ rushing at them come anywhere near Dean. Even if it kills him.

Cas and the Lynk have launched an attack so powerful that the entire sphere flickers; the mini-Lynk dims and the rumbling ceases. Cas continues launching Dean’s energy and the Lynk energy at it, and it stops spinning. It’s suddenly adrift, floating aimlessly toward the Barrier. Its remaining light dies.

Cas cuts off the energy streams. Distantly, he hears Dean calling to him, but he doesn’t understand the words. He knows his wings are burnt. The tips of his fingers are charred. His insides feel strange. But Dean is safe, the world is safe, reality will continue for eons.

With no warning at all, the mini-Lynk lights up like someone plugged in lights on a Christmas tree. It burns with even greater intensity than before, its rumbling noise rocking the air.

 _It played dead. Oh god, it_ played. dead.

Castiel sees Dean’s energy automatically rising in him again. Cas rallies enough to intercede and meld with it, and he fires at the mini-Lynk again, pushing with everything he’s got (and some he doesn’t).

 _Cas!_ Dean yells. God, doesn’t he know how loud he is? Cas feels like his head might shatter. He thinks that could happen, like an opera singer shattering a wine glass by singing a high “A” note.

_Cas, you have to let go! It’s killing you, you have to let go!_

The force magnifies, and Cas painstakingly directs it with his hands and aims it toward the mini-Lynk. Suddenly an onslaught of power adds to the attack. Now that Cas and Dean’s power surge has reached such an intense level of energy, the Lynk can feel their exact location. It bulges through the Barrier ( _woah, that can’t be good for keeping the realms balanced_ ) and surrounds the mini-Lynk in a thick silver ooze. It’s defending its borders, like a lion protecting its pride. Cas and Dean watch open-mouthed as the mini-Lynk is sucked up into the Lynk. The thick silver ooze wraps over the area where the smaller sphere was absorbed, and the Lynk slides back through the Barrier to its home just outside of Heaven.

Cas’s sensory perception is suddenly filled with colors: deep, bright, metallic; every color he can name and some he can’t. The energy he’s been directing backflows and overwhelms him until it’s all he can feel. It is prickly, so hot the heat of it should kill him; and it shrieks as it dissipates. An eternity passes by in seconds.

He senses the minds of all the people in stasis as they begin to wake up. Cas registers that the Lynk has recovered enough to begin returning people to the worlds they originated from. Their confusion, fear and horror rush into him like a tidal wave, but he blocks it all out instantly to focus on the one sound he desperately needs to hear.

“ _Cas?_ ” Dean’s mind touches his, tunneling through the chaos caused by the sudden destruction of the mini-Lynk.

_“Cas? Something’s wrong, man, I’m – I feel – like my body is somewhere else, and my thoughts – my thoughts are in the wrong place – Cas? Cas? Help me!”_

Cas searches the Barrier with his mind, forcing his wings painfully through the current mess of residual (weird ass) energy until he finds Dean. He wraps his arms around him and drags him out of the void.

 


	13. Chapter 13

Dean wakes up with the worst hangover of his life. His head feels like it’s been held in a vice while hammers pounded into it and maybe rocks were dropped on it, too. He feels before he sees Castiel move toward him. He kneels down and touches Dean’s forehead with two fingers, and his head is suddenly miraculously free of pain. He notices that he is laying on something soft, like a cloud, and it’s – oh. Huh. A pile of - feathery pillows. He needs to keep this thing. He tries to snuggle back into its warmth, but the strong hands tugging him upright have other plans.

“Dean?” Cas says softly.

Now that he’s sitting up, he sees a room that is penetrated by whiteness. The obvious exception is the clear glacier blue eyes looking at him with concern. Dean wonders why those beautiful wings are tucked so tightly against Cas’ back, almost as if he’s trying to hide them.

“You were dying,” Dean says.

“I’m fine. They Lynk and the archangels were able to heal my wounds.”

The corners of Cas’s mouth curve up, and Dean can’t take his eyes off those lips.

“I think I lost consciousness. At the end. Did we do it?”

“We did it, Dean. How do you feel?” Cas asks.

Suddenly Dean realizes he might be in heaven and is most likely dead.

“Uh – I’m confused. If I’m dead, why am I still – you know – alive?”

Cas kneels on the pillow (cloud?) thing next to Dean and puts a hand on each of his arms to steady him.

“You’re fine, Dean. More that fine. I was able to extract most of your energy, and the rest you burned out on your own. That’s why you are no longer surrounded by your shield.”

Dean fails to take in anything after “you’re fine.” He’s distracted by the enormous silvery shimmering ball spinning and floating off to his left. It is so incredibly huge he didn’t even notice it at first. The realization of what he’s looking at takes his breath away.

“Cas,” he chokes out. “It’s the Lynk.”

Cas smiles brilliantly at him and fuck, is he _glowing_?

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I see it so often, sometimes I forget.”

Dean’s eyes focus on the figures standing near the sphere. They look incredibly tiny next to it, but he easily recognizes the three archangels who sent the (whatever the hell it was) energy into the void that helped save them. He’s a little fuzzy on the details, and his head hurts, but it’s over.

He sees other angels wandering in and out of some sort of station. Cas sees him looking and says, “that’s the control center. Come, I’ll show you.”

Dean gratefully takes the hand Cas extends, because he’s not entirely sure about the whole standing up thing yet. They walk (slowly) over to an area that is separated from the rest of the space he woke up in (there’s no way a place this huge can be called a room). Three shimmering walls partition off an area containing a small floating sphere. It’s about the size of a crystal ball, and an angel with periwinkle-colored wings has her fingers sunk into it.

“Cas, what’s she doing?” he whispers.

“She’s talking to the Lynk,” he answers. “We can look into and monitor the Lynk while standing right next to it, but we need this to actually communicate with it.” He gestures to the crystal ball thing. “You could think of this as a – sensor. Several of them exist, but this is the only one in this dimension.” The blue-winged angel massages the inside of the ball, and her face contorts as she concentrates, moving her lips silently.

Dean is about to ask Cas if the Lynk likes having its ball fondled (he can’t help it) when he looks up from the sensor and notices an odd discrepancy between the other angels he’s seen and Cas.

“Dude? How come you’re the only one with black wings?”

Cas’s face turns to stone. The other angel in the room suddenly ceases her – communication, whatever – and leaves quickly, as if a fire alarm just sounded.

“Okay, that was weird?” He glances over at Cas, who looks blankly over Dean’s shoulder.

“Dude?” he prods.

Cas closes his eyes and tucks his wings even more tightly against his back. Dean thinks part of them must be in another dimension; no way do all those feathers fit in that small of a space.

“My wings are an abomination,” Cas says quietly.

Dean’s mouth falls open because _what_?

“Those of us with black wings tend to be – deviant. Most of us are on assignments far away from sentient beings, where we can’t – do harm. And then there’s me.”

He looks up at Dean. “My one specific purpose is to protect the Lynk’s Barriers. When my wings developed – like this – I was nearly banished. But the Lynk – liked me, I guess you could say.”

Dean suspects maybe the others are just jealous because _fuck_ Cas’s wings are amazing. It occurs to him that neither of them are currently behind shields, and he can touch – actually _touch_ \- the feathers, finally. Eyes never leaving Cas’ face, he reaches out to gently do just that.

“I don’t know how anyone could think these things are anything but beautiful,” he says softly as Cas stares at him. He looks away suddenly, and Dean wonders if he’s even aware that he’s pushing his feathers against Dean’s hand. It occurs to him that in all of Cas’s long life, he has probably never been touched like this.

Michael and Raphael walk into the control center, disrupting them. Cas quickly tucks his wings tightly against his back again.

“Well, well,” says Raphael. “You did a good job with your Catalyst. I’m glad our little chat helped. You managed to fully convince him he would not survive. The Lynk trusted him completely.”

Dean’s eyes go wide. “Wait, what? Why would - Cas, what’s he talking about?”

Cas locks his eyes on Dean. “I was going to tell you-”

“Tell me what?”

“You were never in any danger.”


	14. Chapter 14

The roaring in Dean’s ears nearly drowns out the rest of the conversation. Cas lied to him. _Again._ All this time he let him think he was _dying_. He let _Sam and Jess_ think he was dying.

Son of a _bitch._

Distantly he hears Raphael and Michael explaining to Cas that the Lynk is repairing itself. Everyone (and everything) within the void between Barriers is being attracted back to their own realms. They’ll still need Cas’s assistance; the sooner everything’s fixed, the better.

From the look on Cas’ face, Dean is fairly certain he’s not paying attention either.

Dean thinks, what they say about first impressions seems to apply in this case; he remembers thinking, this guy is hot, but he’s a dick.

He’s trying to pretend he’s not disappointed, not hurt, not _fucking furious_.

“I believe the two of you have earned a little break,” a new voice cuts in cheerfully.

Dean recognizes - Gabriel, that was his name. He wiggles his eyebrows and grins at Dean and Castiel. “I think the Lynk will be fine for a day for two, don’t you?” he asks, pointedly looking at Raphael and Michael.

“I agree,” Michael says. He also seems oblivious to the tension between Cas and Dean, tension thicker than the walls in an underground nuclear fallout shelter. The three archangels leave, and Cas and Dean are alone.

The silence becomes uncomfortable. “You’re angry with me.”

“Ya think? Take me home,” Dean growls. He stares at the Lynk, anything to keep his eyes off the beautiful face of the man who lied to him, first about their connection, and now about this. Dean has never trusted easily. He won’t make the mistake of trusting someone again.

“Not until I explain,” Cas says with a (failed) attempt at sounding calm. “Please, Dean, hear me out. Then, if you still want to go -” his voice breaks and he pauses. “If you still want to go home, I’ll take you, and I’ll never bother you again.”

Dean firmly reminds himself that Cas is a dick.

“Fuck you. I don’t need to hear more lies. If you won’t take me home, I’ll have Gabriel do it.”

He begins to stalk off toward the archangels when Cas says, “You had to believe fixing the Lynk would kill you. Otherwise none of this would have worked.”

Dean turns back and stares at him a moment before he asks, “In what fucking Universe does that even begin to make sense?”

“The Lynk, out of necessity, has a very well-developed sense of preservation. It had to know that your motives were pure.” Cas’s eyes focus on him with a laser’s intensity, as if he can _stare_ Dean into believing what he says.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Looking at the shiny spinning mass, he wonders how the hell a fucking sphere could have opinions on his motives.

Cas uncertainly walks closer to him. “Raphael received revelation that the Catalyst – that _you_ – had enough power to accelerate the _destruction_ of reality. To tear it apart. He was worried that you-”

“Would what? Destroy reality? On purpose? For something fun to do on a Saturday night? What the _hell_ is wrong with you people?”

Dean’s stumbling over his own words, but seriously? Who wants to destroy reality? Other than Zach, of course.

Oh.

 _His boss_.

“You were afraid Zach got to me,” he says quietly. “You thought he convinced me to join his creepy ass crusade.” Suddenly this is starting to make sense.

“We couldn’t risk it. If we tried to use your energy without knowing whose side you were on, the Lynk would have very likely killed you in self-defense.”

Dean closes his eyes and falls back against the wall. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry, Dean. I never wanted to deceive you. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d even be _able_ to after our connection developed. I feel you, so strongly, all the time, and I was afraid I’d open up too much, let you see too much, and you would figure it out.”

“So you’re telling me the Lynk made you lie. To protect itself. And Raphael didn’t tell you he created our bond. He just assumed you knew.”

“Yes.”

Dean considers this a minute. “Your friends are dicks, Cas.” He looks at the angel, who is like a living electric current. His hair is an angry mess; his wings are a barely contained force on their own, the feathers twitching like bare feet dancing on too-hot concrete. His body is tense and the look on his face – sweet merciful Jesus, Dean has never been eye-fucked like this before, and it’s - doing things to him.

Dean clears his throat. Unable to look away, he hears his mouth say, “Is there somewhere we can go and, uh, talk about this some more?”


	15. Chapter 15

Castiel watches patiently as Dean explores the small rooms he resides in. There’s really not much to see. Maybe Dean is stalling. Maybe he regrets -

“So,” Dean says, a little too loudly, “this is where you hang out when you’re not – saving the Universe and stuff?”

“Yes,” Cas responds. He knows he’s staring, but he can’t stop studying Dean. It’s like he’s never seen him before. Which is actually kind of true, since neither of them are behind any kind of Barriers or shields (Cas hasn’t figured out why the cold, which he is no longer protected from, hasn’t seemed to affect him. But then, he’s Dean, the most powerful Catalyst in history, so who knows?)

And Gabriel said they have a day or two.

Cas knows he wants to experience intimacy with Dean, but he’s not sure if Dean feels the same way about him. He definitely feels – something – from Dean, but he’s unsure about – well, everything, actually. Is Dean put off by Cas’s inexperience? Maybe Dean doesn’t even find him attractive. He is a different species, after all, and his wings . . . He’s never wished for normal wings as much in his life as he does right now. It’s mortifying, how much he wants just to feel Dean _touch_ him.

“You know,” Dean says so suddenly that Cas flinches, “all you gotta do is ask.”

Cas stills as Dean slowly reaches out toward the feathers he’d briefly touched in the control room. Cas shivers as Dean’s hand moves past his shoulder and silently makes contact with the dark mass of fluff at the top of his right wing. He rolls the barbs of the feathers between his fingers. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you aren’t beautiful, Cas.”

Cas has no idea how to respond to that, but the wing flicks at Dean’s fingers and puffs up. It’s embarrassing how little control he has over his own body right now, but the sensation of Dean’s touch is incredible. He had no idea he’s been missing out on – this.

“Does this mean you’re no longer angry with me?” Cas asks hesitantly.

The corner of Dean’s mouth curves in a smile. Cas realizes how close their faces are. His eyes fall helplessly to Dean’s lips, and suddenly Dean is kissing him, gentle and chaste. Their lips are _touching._ Cas pulls back in surprise.

“No one’s ever done that before, have they?” Dean whispers.

Cas shifts his eyes off to the side, embarrassed. “There’s never been a reason-”

Dean wraps his hand around Cas’s head and pulls him close. He kisses him again, gently, pressing against his lips just a little harder. His fingers wander further along the mess of feathers, and he reaches inside the trenchcoat to wrap his other hand around Cas’ waist. The light pressure of Dean’s closed lips both relaxes and electrifies him. Then, frustratingly, Dean pulls away.

“So what do you think?” he asks with a cocky grin.

Cas looks helplessly at him. “I think I need more information before I can form an opinion.” He cautiously leans into Dean and kisses him. Dean returns the gentle pressure before licking along Cas’s top lip, coaxing his mouth open. Then his tongue is reaching into Cas’ mouth and swiping along the bottom edge of his teeth. Cas sucks on Dean’s tongue, pulling it further into his mouth.

He had no idea kissing Dean would be so enjoyable.

Cas leans closer against Dean, pressing his body against his, for the first time needing to be close to somebody. He allows his hands to run up and down Dean’s back. The fabric of his shirt is warm and soft, but he wants to feel the warmth of Dean’s skin. He needs this; he never realized how much.

Dean pulls away from his mouth but doesn’t loosen the hold on his waist. He looks into Cas’s eyes.

“Did I do something wrong?” Cas asks huskily.

Dean chuckles. “You can’t really do it wrong, Cas.”

Cas doesn’t understand Dean’s expression, because he’s never seen anyone look at him like that before. Dean’s eyes have turned a deep shade of green. He smiles, and Cas’s whole body relaxes as the hand in his feathers continues stroking them softly. Cas feels safe and wanted in a way that is entirely new to him.

“I’d like to give you lots more – information – Cas, if you’re okay with that.”

Cas’s eyes grow wide as he realizes what Dean means. His heart begins pounding, because he wants Dean, wants to feel every inch of Dean’s body with his own. Staring at Dean, he remembers that he’s waiting for an answer.

He says the only word he can think of right now: “Please.”

Smiling, Dean’s hand moves from the feathers and cups Cas’s face, fingers stroking along his stubbly jaw. Cas leans into the touch; everything Dean does to him makes him ache for more. Cas reaches into Dean’s hair; he’s always wondered how it would feel beneath his fingers. He’s not disappointed. It’s soft and warm, and he tugs it gently, affectionately.

Dean grins and returns his attention to Cas’s lips, but his mouth and tongue seem more frantic now, his movements more intense. Dean is reaching deeper, his tongue licking a stripe across the roof of his mouth, and it _tickles_. Cas licks the bottom of his tongue, savoring the novelty of being so close and intimate with Dean. Dean withdraws his tongue and licks the outside of Cas’s lips, bottom first, then top.

“How do I get you out of these clothes?” Dean growls.

Cas smiles in satisfaction with the knowledge that Dean wants to see his body. He wonders how Dean will react to the sight of the way his wings erupt from his back; no human has ever seen that before.

He reluctantly lets go of Dean, allowing his wings to de-substantiate from this dimension into the next, so that he can undress. Without losing eye contact with Dean, he slides out of his trenchcoat and suit, leaving only his shirt, tie and boxers. Dean is staring at the shadows of his wings in awe.

“Uh, Cas, where’d your wings go?” he asks.

“I need to dematerialize them to be able to get my clothing off,” he explains. “They are merely – temporarily – elsewhere, although they are still connected to me.”

“That is _awesome_ ,” Dean replies, swallowing visibly. Cas is unsure of why Dean seems so giddy, but from Dean’s reaction, he suspects he should remove more of his clothes. He reaches up to undo the tie, watching the beautiful darkened light in Dean’s eyes.

To his surprise, Dean pushes his hands away, grabs Cas by the tie and pulls him forward. He brings his wings back to this realm trying to steady himself. Dean manhandles him to the ground before pushing him flat against the floor and straddling his lap.

Cas’s wings are pressed to the ground, spread out underneath him, and Dean’s weight is pinning his hips. Cas feels himself getting fully hard. Looking up at Dean, he puts his hands on his thighs, squeezing the thick muscles and trying to breathe normally.

“Dean, I want you to take your clothes off too,” he demands.

Dean’s eyebrows raise. “Telling me what to do?” he teases.

Cas reaches up to remove Dean’s shirt, because if he’s not going to do it himself, then Cas will gladly do it for him.

To his surprise, Dean leans forward and grabs his wrists, then pins them above his head.

“Not yet,” he says huskily. His tongue slips out and wets his lips. Cas’s mouth falls open and he sucks in a breath. His wings are twitching impatiently and Dean grins down at him.

Cas had no idea being at Dean’s mercy would be so incredibly hot. And also frustrating.

“Dean-” he breathes.

Dean releases his arms and lays his entire body down on top of Cas. He begins writhing against the bulge in Cas’s pants.

“Dean!”

“What?” he teases.

Cas narrows his eyes. Enough of this shit, he has powers for a reason.

Cas flips Dean off of him in one smooth motion and removes his jacket, flannel and t-shirt before Dean even realizes what just happened. Dean’s clothes disappear in thin air as Cas remembers he has the ability to send things from realm to realm. Now lying beneath Cas in just his jeans, Dean looks up at him in shock before a wide grin spreads across his face.

“Fuck, Cas-”

“I told you I wanted your clothes off,” Cas says.

“Bossy angel,” Dean murmurs. He reaches up into Cas’s wings and grabs fistfuls of feathers. Cas tries to flex his wings, but Dean tightens his hold, and having his wings restrained like this makes Cas forget to breathe.

With one hand he cups Dean’s cheek and traces his bottom lip with his thumb. Without losing eye contact, he begins to wind his hand through the air beside them.

Dean’s mouth falls open when he realizes Cas is _creating a pathway_. “Dude, what-” he barely has time to utter the words before Cas has scooped him up and jumped them through. (The pathway is clumsily made and not his best work, but he did it in a few seconds and the end justifies the means).

They arrive on a planet that has no visible land, just clear, emerald green sky and randomly dispersed, twisty clouds of white and silver. It’s one of several Cas has discovered recently where he and Dean can survive without shields.

Cas lands them on a nearby plush, white cloud from which silvery wisps dangle loosely. It’s firm enough to hold them, yet soft enough for them to burrow into with very little effort. Dean stands in front of him, feet sinking into the dense mass, his face an expression of total awe. “Cas, where are we?”

“The name of this world is pronounced in a language that is spoken outside the range of human hearing,” Cas responds. Dean blinks at him. Cas asks shyly, “Do you like it?”

“Hell of a place to take a date,” he says softly. “Wrap those things around me,” Dean says, grabbing at his wings.

Cas complies, and gasps at the feel of _so much_ of Dean’s skin against his feathers. Cas may have never done this with anyone, but he certainly knows how it works (in theory). Cas slides his fingers inside the waistband of Dean’s jeans and yanks him closer. Slowly he unbuckles his belt, undoes the top button, unzips the zipper, and finally they are sliding down around Dean’s ankles. Dean steps out of them as Cas cups his hands around the warm skin of his amazingly firm ass, and is pleased that it feels even better in his hands than he imagined. Dean, meanwhile, has begun sucking on Cas’s neck, biting lightly into the skin.

Cas enfolds Dean more tightly within his powerful wings, feeling his warmth in every feather. His hands move around to Dean’s hips, and he traces his hipbones lightly with soft fingers before cupping his butt cheeks and squeezing. Dean’s breath catches. He shifts his weight, leaning forward so his dick is pressing into Cas, and _oh_. Cas pushes into Dean’s crotch, grinding with only Cas’s boxers between them, and Dean echoes his motions as he flicks the buttons open on Cas’s shirt. Cas aches from his groin to his stomach, but letting Dean undress him is much more fun that simply vanishing his clothes onto another plane and, well, it’s gotta be done.

Dean licks his lips, and Cas’s mouth waters as he watches. Dean reaches around and puts a hand on Cas’s back, not letting their dicks lose contact. With the other hand Dean skims over his waist with his fingernails, grinning lazily at him. Cas is getting fucking _impatient;_ before this he has never known the meaning of the word. Dean’s fingers slide the boxers off his hips. Cas takes a moment to admire the incredible image of Dean pressed against his wings. He’s never seen anything so beautiful.

Cas watches Dean admire his muscular chest before he kisses him fiercely. Suddenly a hand (that for once is not Cas’s own) wraps around his dick and squeezes it against Dean’s, watching with laughing eyes and a brilliant smile as Cas’s wings puff out, spreading hugely behind him. Suddenly Cas needs his hands to be everywhere at once. He grabs a fistful of Dean’s hair (“Jesus _Christ_ , Cas”) and pulls his head back to look at him. Dean runs his fingers up and down Cas’s shaft, continuing the gentle squeezes. Cas holds up a finger and traces Dean’s soft lips, then lets it slip into Dean’s mouth. Dean takes the hint and sucks on Cas’ finger, making sloppy wet sounds.

Cas squirms as Dean releases him to cups his balls, then traces his fingers up to begin pumping him slowly, teasing. Cas digs his fingers into Dean’s arms, hard enough to bruise. Dean continues working him, slowly increasing his pace until Cas is panting helplessly. He leans his head back to watch Cas’s face. Cas’s eyes fall closed and his hips move, thrusting into Dean’s hand as Dean murmurs to him.

“You’re so beautiful, Cas, I had no idea how gorgeous you were. . .”

Cas releases Dean’s arm and pulls him into a rough kiss, lips smashed together and tongues clashing. Dean leans back slightly so he can increase his pace. He’s waited so long for this, and as much as he wants to hold off, he can’t.

“Dean,” he says breathlessly, wings wrapping them into a secret place as he spills into his hand.

Dean smears the warm cum into both of his hands, then reaches into Cas’s wings. The liquid coats the feathers beneath Dean’s fingers.

Cas opens his eyes, and stares at Dean for less than a second before he pulls them both to their knees, sinking into the warm cloud. He flicks his wings, trying to shake the cum free, and Dean laughs at him. Dean’s fingers swirl the mess even more deeply into Cas’s wings.

Cas grabs Dean’s shoulders and pins him, pushing him so deeply into the cloud that he’s nearly covered in the swirly silvery strands. Hovering over Dean, he flares his wings, stretching them completely so Dean can see his entire wingspan. Dean gasps.

“Jesus, Cas, look at you. You’re fucking _majestic,_ I can’t believe no one’s ever touched you before.” He sucks in a breath as Cas’s hand lightly caresses his dick. “Fuck, Cas, _fuck,_ are you going to do something about this?” he asks as he thrusts up against him.

“Hmm, like what?”

“Fuck, Cas, don’t tease!”

Smiling, Cas leans down and sucks a kiss onto Dean’s collarbone, then works his way south with the underside of his tongue. He licks a stripe down to Dean’s nipple, lapping over it until it hardens into a thick nub. Then he takes it between his lips as Dean fists his hair and tries to push him downward. Cas sucks hard, pulling the nub into his mouth and lapping, nibbling, as Dean arches into him and groans.

Smiling, Cas drags his stubbly chin across Dean’s skin until he reaches his groin.

“Cas, let me fuck your mouth,” Dean begs. “I can’t take this much longer.”

Raising an eyebrow, Cas takes Dean into his mouth. At the same time, he reaches into the cloud and spreads its softness onto Dean’s abdomen. Dean gasps, releasing his hold on Cas’s hair, and pushes himself up to rest on his elbows.

Cas sucks on the head, his rough tongue creating friction that makes Dean try to push further into Cas’s mouth.

“Cas, let me in.”

Cas smiles and winks at him, then releases him and licks a swath of wet heat under his balls.

“For fuck’s sake, Cas!” He reaches down to grab himself, but Cas bends his wings and pins Dean’s arms with them.

“ _Cas!_ ”

“I like it when you scream my name,” Cas observes.

Finally, he puts Dean out of his misery and wraps his mouth around him. Dean moans and struggles against the weight of Cas’s wings, and Cas _loves_ it. Dean is trying to buck his hips, but Cas holds him down. He bobs back and turns his head, allowing Dean to poke into the inside of his cheek.

“Fucking hell,” he gasps.

Cas sucks him halfway to his throat, slowly, getting used to the feel of Dean in his mouth. Dean’s cock is pulsing and starting to leak now. Cas continues steadily, and Dean’s hands grab into the cloud.

“Cas, you are amazing,” he says roughly.

The deep green sky matches the dark green of Dean’s eyes as he spills down Cas’s throat.


	16. Chapter 16

The feel of the almost unbearably soft, pliant cushion beneath his body is confirmation that Dean has in fact woken up to the strangest morning after in all of recorded history. He barely remembers Cas whisking them back to his rooms and cuddling up next to him on his weird, soft, pillow-bed thing. He should probably be concerned that there are feathers on the bed that didn’t come from a pillow, but – wait. Where the hell is Cas? He’s just had the most intense, awe inspiring experience of his entire existence, and the only other person to experience this with him is nowhere to be found. He tells himself he’s not disappointed, and he’s very good at lying to himself.

Screw it, he thinks resolutely. He’s pretty sure he can find his way back to the control center. It occurs to him with sudden horror that he is naked, and his clothes could be literally anywhere in the Universe.

That’s a new one.

Looking around (not frantically, he’ll figure something out) doesn’t inspire much hope of finding something to wear. Cas’s small space is immaculate. And . . . white. He’s starting to feel like he’s become part of a dystopian novel where color is forbidden and messiness is punishable by death, because there’s definitely a theme in this place.

He’s almost decided just to wander through the place naked when he spots his clothes, folded tidily in a small pile by the door. He’s almost as thankful to see color as he is to have clothing.

After he dresses he makes his way back to the control center, where he finds Cas standing gloomily next to Michael and Raphael. Gabriel is arguing with Raphael in harsh whispers, and Jesus, he would expect Cas to look a little less stressed after last night.

Cas looks up at him and a flicker of longing ghosts across his face and is gone. Dean’s brows draw together; that is pretty much the last thing he would expect to see on Cas’s face. The other angels sense Dean’s presence and look up, and okay, this is just – he’s not sure what. Michael looks angry. Raphael looks pensive, Gabriel looks hopeful.

“Dean. It is time. Come over here.” Raphael stalks forward, nearly shoving his way past the other two, and Cas’s face crumples.

“Uh, time?”

“Time,” he confirms. “We will dissolve your telepathic link with Castiel, and you can return to your realm. We will let you know when your presence is required to finish repairing the Barriers.”

“Oh, well, way to make a guy feel needed,” he says, and then – oh. Dissolve the link? He’s gotten kind of used to Cas’ presence in his mind. It’s like a comforting hum settled right at the base of his brain, and he didn’t see this coming, but he wants to keep it.

“Yeah, thanks but no thanks. My brain is doing just fine without you poking around in it -” (Raphael’s eyes narrow) “– and I kinda like Cas just where he is. Thanks anyway.”

Dean feels a little better about himself when Cas smiles at him as bright as light beaming through a stained-glass window. “I do need to go check in on my brother, though, so how about you zap me home?”

Dean rubs his hands together and looks at Raphael expectantly.

“Your connection to Castiel is unnatural. You are human. You no longer need angelic connection to continue the repairs to the Barriers. Your energy is expended; your ability to draw the Aberrations to you is gone. The pathways can be controlled by Castiel, your only job will be returning the last few pieces of debris that were left in the void.”

“Debris,” Dean repeats numbly.

“Hair, mostly. A few pieces of jewelry. A couple of fake fingernails. Contacts. Glasses -”

“I get it!”

“Castiel will create a shield for you to protect you in the void.”

Oh, god, no, not that fucking shield again. Dean can’t stand seeing Castiel in that thing, where they will be unable to kiss, touch, or _fuck like animals_ on _other planets._ He won’t even be able to fucking _see_ him clearly.

This isn’t happening.

And Cas isn’t saying a word to stop it, what the hell?

“And if I refuse?” he bites out.

Raphael laughs. “It’s irrelevant.” He waves his hand, and something clicks in Dean’s mind. Dean finds himself flying backwards into the Lynk. The last thing he remembers as the wavy images of other worlds swim by him is Castiel screaming his name.

*****

Dean wakes up in his own bed. Nothing feels quite as good as being buried beneath your own blankets in your own bedroom. He needs to call Sammy, he thinks, and then the full force of what happened hits him like a ton of really angry bricks.

_Cas?_

_Fuck, Cas, please tell me you’re still there!_

Nothing.

“CAAASS!” he screams, looking around his room, as if by magic the angel might appear.

Horror and emptiness creep down his spine. The body memory of touching Cas’s skin, of being wrapped up in the powerful wings, of the pale dry lips pressing against his; Dean has finally found something worth holding onto and it’s just been ripped away. Waves of nausea flow through his body so powerfully and suddenly that he just barely makes it to the bathroom in time to puke.

But Cas - Cas knows where he is, knows how to find him. He’ll be coming to get Dean to make repairs to the Barriers. He can restore their connection. He can take Dean back with him and they can see each other without the fucking shields. Hell, they can go to any damn planet they can survive on, and Raphael and those fuckers will never know.

The nagging ache in the back of his head tells him this day will be miserable for more than one reason. The back of his spine is tingling, which he figures is probably an aftereffect of losing the connection to Cas.

He cleans up and brushes his teeth, then takes a couple of aspirin. Fuck, on top of everything else, he’s gonna have to find a new job. He’s about to pick up the phone to call Sam when there’s a knock at the door.

Cas? No, he wouldn’t knock.

He opens the door to find a very relieved looking Sam, who immediately pulls him into a bear hug.

“What the hell, jerk, you haven’t answered your phone in days!” he says. He’s obviously trying to sound angry, but he can’t hide the relief in his voice.

“Dude, I have so much to tell you.” Dean sighs. Sam is a welcome distraction from the pain of losing Cas.

 _No! You haven’t lost him!_ His brain insists, but it’s even less convincing than Sam’s attempt to be pissed.

They go into the dining room and sit down with a couple of beers.

“Dude I thought you were dead. Dean -” he says uncomfortably. “Look, whatever mess you’re in, you gotta know I’m here for you. We’ll figure out a way to save you.”

Dean downs half the bottle that’s in front of him.

“Sam I’m – no longer in danger. I never was. He -” Dean swallows. “He lied to me. He did it to protect me, sort of –”

Sam stares at him incredulously, and Dean looks away to hide the guilt on his face.

“This is about some guy?” he asks, a hint of malice in his voice.

“No, it’s not like that.” He closes his eyes and runs his fingers along the edge of the table. He spills out the whole story: the first time he saw an Aberration in the field, Cas showing up and telling him what he was, his jumps around the country, his feelings for a fucking _angel_. He doesn’t talk about the telepathic connection. It’s – private. Sacred. He’s not sure why, he just can’t tell Sam.

When he’s finished with the story, Sam gets up and walks to the kitchen without a word. Dean sits silently, knots in his stomach, wondering what Sam must think of him. But his brother simply comes back in the room and sets another round of beers on the table. At least he hasn’t called him crazy yet, which means maybe he actually believes him. They’ve both hunted monsters, after all, and strange is just sort of part of life.

“Dude, I don’t even know where to start. I mean, how could you _possibly_ think you could have a future with someone who doesn’t even live on _earth?”_

Dean puts his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I just-I’m not sure how to have a future without him.” He needs to change the subject. Like, now.

“How about I run out and get us some breakfast?”

Sam gives him a warning look that assures him the subject will be revisited. “I’ll come with you and make sure you get something that’s actually _food_.”

Sam stays overnight to make sure Dean is okay (which he’s not, but he can fake it pretty well). He insists Dean check in with him every day. Dean rolls his eyes but promises he’ll do it.

Dean goes over to his couch and collapses onto it. He grabs his remote, marveling at the fact that he can finally catch up on Game of Thrones. He wonders if Cas has ever watched TV. Dean thinks he might like Game of Thrones, and he can imagine them binge watching it together, while he’s cuddled up in his wings.

 _I’ve got to stop this_.

They can’t have a future together. It’s not allowed, and Cas has apparently accepted that, so Dean needs to too.

*****

After four days of radio silence, Dean wakes to the sizzling sound of Cas appearing in the living room. Sitting up quickly (and pressing his hand to his forehead), his feet knock over the empty beer bottles that accumulated on the floor last night before he passed out on the couch. For several long moments they simply stare at each other through Cas’s shield. As much as Dean longs to take him in his arms, kiss him . . . he makes himself remember that entertaining such thoughts will only make him hurt worse.

“I suppose you’re here to take me to clean up your mess,” he says coldly. “Sorry, but I’m out.”

Even through the shield, he can see Cas wince.

“I wanted to come sooner, Dean. I’ve thought of nothing but you since you were thrown through the Lynk. I’m not – I’m not here for – _that_.”

Dean gets off the couch so he can stand in front of Cas. “Then what do you want?” he asks warily.

“Dean, I’m not sure what you’re feeling right now. I don’t have a lot of experience with this.” Cas looks like a frightened animal who might bolt at any second. “When they broke my connection to you, I felt such emptiness. I can’t even describe-”

“You don’t have to,” Dean tells him softly, his heart warming. “I felt it too.”

“Do you – have you missed it? Have you missed me?”

Dean closes his eyes. He spent most of the last four days imaging what he would say to Castiel when (if?) he showed up again. The anger has mostly burned out now, but the pain has not.

“Where the _hell_ have you been?”

Cas slumps. “Some of the people that were trapped in the Void were not returned to their realms. We had to – convince – the Lynk to open the Barriers and return them. Since there is still matter of various types trapped in the wrong realms, it was – I guess you would say confused”.

“Dean – being with you has changed me. I – that night – I want us to be able to have that. Always.”

“Yeah, well, good luck convincing your brothers of that.” He reaches back around to the tingling in his back. The ache has gotten much worse. He squeezes the skin, trying to massage the pain away. He must have slept on it wrong.

So much for aspirin.

Cas freezes as his eyes track Dean’s hand. “Dean. What are you doing?”

“Nothing, I’m just a little sore, that’s all.”

Cas’ eyes narrow. “Dean, this is very important. Describe to me exactly what you’re feeling and where exactly you’re feeling it.”

Great, Dean thinks. Now something else is wrong with me. Why the fuck not.

“I told you, it’s nothing.”

“Dean!”

Cas’s voice is so urgent Dean starts to get nervous.

“Ever since I got back, my spine has been tingling. Sort of like using the energy but dulled. It’s not a big deal.”

The way Cas is looking at him, Dean thinks maybe it _is_ a big deal.

“Dean.”

Cas’ expression has softened and he looks – what is that?

“Do you have any pain in your head?”

“No. Well, it feels a little funny in the back I guess.” He narrows his eyes. “What the fuck, Cas? What am I dying of now?”

“We need to return to Heaven.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

Dean wakes up alone in Cas’ room. He feels weirdly calm, for the first time since Raphael threw him into the Lynk. All this zapping around should be affecting him – somehow – he thinks, but hey, the sizzling in his spine seems to have gone away. Cas must have used some magic angel crap to fix him, though why he had to do it in Heaven is beyond Dean.

Cas’s door flies open and he walks into the room with Raphael, and Dean immediately stiffens. But Raphael looks – amused.

Dean relaxes, and if he feels a little light-headed at seeing Cas again, that’s his own business.

“Well, this is certainly unexpected,” Raphael begins, and holy _shit_ the guy has the ability to _smile._ Even his burgundy wings are perked up, and it’s . . . actually kind of creepy, Dean thinks.

He looks helplessly at Castiel. “What’s he talking about? What’s unexpected?”

“Dean, be calm. This is a good thing. Your bloodline and genetic makeup allow you to retain Grace.”

Dean remains silent, waiting for an actual explanation as he looks from one angel to the other.

“What you were feeling – the tingly pain in your spine – it was leftover grace from our connection. My grace. When we were separated – unwillingly -” (Cas glares at Raphael) “and the connection was torn apart, it became – agitated.”

“Your grace _became agitated_?” Dean says expressionlessly.

“Now that we are back together, if you want to,” he says, suddenly shy, “we can easily regain that connection.”

Dean is frozen for a moment. Obviously, Raphael has changed his mind about Dean being with Cas. It feels like getting permission from an overbearing father to date his daughter. He has no idea what to do with this.

“Can I speak to Cas alone?” he manages to say.

Raphael smiles _again, what is happening?_ and instructs Cas to keep him _informed_ (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean), before turning and leaving without another word.

Cas reaches for Dean and puts a hand on his arm.

“What now, Cas?”

Cas is positively beaming (and possibly glowing, again). “Dean, when they severed our connection, what they broke apart was a natural bond.”

Dean recalls Cas telling him that natural bonds only formed between mates.

Dean raises an eyebrow. “So does that mean - we were angel-married?”

Cas smiles at him. “Something like that, yes. We can be with each other, Dean. In any way you want.”

Dean hums. “So, uh, do I get down on one knee and ask you to angel-marry me?”

Cas frowns, missing the obvious. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on two knees?”

  


*****

It’s so new, being able to touch, feeling the warmth and firmness of the body below his. Looking down at Cas, he slowly moves his hips, rubbing his erection back and forth against Cas’s. Cas squirms as he wraps his hands around Dean’s shoulder blades and pulls them closer together, so close even the shields couldn’t separate them now.

Dean doesn’t know exactly where their clothes went, or even when they disappeared; but he does know that Cas’s magical angel powers are _awesome_. Cas licks against Dean’s lips and Dean meets his eyes briefly before closing them and losing himself in the timeless dream of Cas’s mouth.

His hands are stuffed into Cas’s feathers (his second favorite part of Cas’s body; he’s starting a mental list and it is _long_ ), and he thinks he may never actually let go. He takes the tongue Cas is offering and sucks it slowly in and out of his mouth, mimicking (not subtly) another motion he wants to feel from Cas and very soon. Cas scrapes his nails back and forth on Dean’s shoulder blades. The teasing, tickling fingers dig into the skin and scratch as Dean licks a stripe across Cas’s top lip before lightly scraping the stubbled jaw with his teeth.

Cas’s fingertips trace a trail up the sides of Dean’s (ticklish _holy crap_ ) ribs. Dean grinds down against him, causing Cas to buck his hips and they slot together as Dean unwittingly pulls on his handfuls of feathers. Cas growls, and Dean suddenly finds himself flipped over and pinned roughly to the floor (more super powers and holy _shit_ ). Cas sits over him on all fours, hands pushing down to hold his shoulders firmly and one leg on either side of him. Dean, breathing heavily, licks his tongue slowly across his top lip and stares into dark blue eyes that have the beginning of blue light shining through the pupils.

“I want to feel your mouth around me,” Cas commands.

Dean can do that. “Bring it,” he smirks.

Cas traces Dean’s lips with a forefinger. The light pressure tickles, teases, and Dean wishes he would just put his dick in his mouth already. Cas is a fucking tease and to his surprise, he _likes_ it. The anticipation is so _fucking hot_.

Cas crawls forward and angles his hips, and Dean greedily wraps his lips around what he’s offering. It fills him up, and the feel of his tongue being pressed against that warmth is arousing as fuck. He pulls back a little; Cas is huge, and it’s too much too fast. Dean has given blow jobs before but, again, _huge_. Maybe it’s an angel thing. Cas, still on all fours, looks down at Dean from between his arms, and Dean leans his head back, releasing Cas altogether.

“Is that all you can do?” Cas teases. He pokes his dick onto Dean’s face, wiggling his hips, dragging the tip across Dean’s cheek.

Dark, silky wings drape from Cas’s back to either side of them, creating their private, perfect world, which Dean will never, ever get tired of. Dean turns his head and sucks the tip of Cas into his mouth. This time, he circles his tongue around it, allowing the bottom of his tongue to push the tip of Cas into the warmth of his mouth, angling his jaw so his teeth barely make contact with the skin.

Moaning, Cas pulls out and quickly pushes back in, and this time Dean is ready and sucks him in deep. Cas’s eyes fall closed as Dean uses his tongue to move Cas back and forth in his mouth like he’s playing with an (unusually large) lollipop. Then Dean sucks him down farther; he’s never had someone this deep inside him before and how is he not choking to death?

In his mind, Cas laughs at him. _I suppressed your gag reflex, Dean. I want to come down your throat._

Hmm. Telepathic connections are useful when you want to agree enthusiastically but your mouth is full of dick.

_Go ahead, Cas. Whenever you’re ready._

Dean hears Cas draw in a sharp breath before pumping his hips faster and fucking Dean’s mouth as hard as he can take it, and Dean hears with both his mind and his ears Cas moaning his name. _Dean,_ fuck _you have a dirty mouth, so fucking hot, I had no idea . . ._

And then, unexpectedly, _I’m going to come on your face, Dean._

 _Payback for decorating your wings?_ Dean responds playfully as Cas pulls out and spills all over Dean’s cheeks and lips. Dean feels the warm liquid running down his face to his ears. Cas trails his fingers along his cheeks, smearing circles before putting two fingers in Dean’s mouth, and Dean eagerly cleans them off. He barely has time to take a breath before Cas slides his tongue into Dean’s mouth. It’s gentle, this time; there’s no trace of urgency at all. Cas strokes light fingers across the roughness of Dean’s cheek and jaw, then takes a finger and traces along the top edge of his ear. He pulls back and looks thoughtfully at Dean.

“There’s something I’d like to try,” Cas says.

Dean is so enamored with the beautiful angel that anything Cas wants right now, he’s gonna get; he could suggest putting feathers up Dean’s ass right now and Dean would enthusiastically agree.

“Whatever you want, Angel. I’m yours."

With a slow smile, Cas rolls onto Dean’s left side. Dean takes the opportunity to appreciate the view as Cas completely covers Dean with his wing. The sensation of feathers covering Dean’s naked body is like being underneath a blanket of soft grass.

Then the individual feathers that are resting between his legs begin to move independently of each other. The _individual feathers_.

Holy fucking _hell_.

Cas’s eyes study him intently as feathers slide gently along the inside of his legs, stopping at the crease where his thighs meet his groin before repeating the motion. Meanwhile, two or three other feathers are caressing the underside of his balls, lifting them, holding them, lightly touching the soft, taut skin.

_Jesus, Cas, I can’t – how – FUCK!_

Dean has no idea if he said that out loud or in his head, but really, who fucking cares? He’s more concerned with imminent sensory overload at the moment.

_CAS!_

“Yes, Dean?” he answers seriously, as if he’s watching a documentary on fruit flies instead of utterly destroying Dean’s ability to remember things like breathing.

Feathers are teasing his nipples, tracing light trails up and down his arms and legs, touching his face, and Dean can’t _move_ , can’t _speak_ , can’t _think_.

Then, impossibly, Cas gives him more. A group of feathers encase Dean’s dick and squeeze from all sides. The entire wing is moving, thrusting up and down. The pressure of feathers, the soft caress of Cas’s wings, the light touch against his sensitive skin . . . Dean’s grabbing the feathers of that wing, barely feeling them stuffed in between his fingers, not realizing the low moaning he hears is somehow coming from him. Cas presses his feathers harder around Dean, squeezing (how the fuck can _feathers_ grip that _strong_?)

Cas begins running his fingers gently through Dean’s hair in rhythm with the feathers stroking his dick. It feels like mere seconds, it feels like forever, and before Dean knows what’s happening, he’s shooting his load into Cas’s wing and there are no words in any language ever spoken to encompass how he feels right now.

Being jerked off by fucking feathers may be the weirdest way to get off in the entire history of humanity’s escapades, but it is goddamn _effective_.

Dean wraps his arms around Cas and kisses him. He nuzzles into Cas’s neck.

“I want to stay with you, Cas,” he murmurs.

Cas runs his fingers up the warm skin of Dean’s back. “Good, because I have no plans to let you go.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Epilogue:**

**Sam and Jess meet Cas**

 

Sam has the door open so Dean can park his car in the garage and Cas can get into the house without any of the neighbors seeing his wings (and _losing their shit_ ). A few months ago, Sam made Junior Partner in the law firm he works at, and he and Jess are now comfortably settled in a beautiful house with a well-manicured lawn in a nice but unpretentious neighborhood. Dean couldn’t be happier for them. They plan to fill the house with lots of kids, and Sam is finally getting the stable, loving family he’s always wanted.

If only his mom could be here to see it.

“Dean?” Cas says softly.

He clears his throat. Looking at the slightly nervous angel in his passenger seat makes him grin.

“He’ll love you, Cas.”

Cas nods and shifts his wings so he can get out of the car.

Dean uses his key and lets himself in. Cas follows him, his wings wrapped tightly against his back. Dean reaches back and twines their fingers together.

 _It’s gonna be fine,_ he tells Cas through their link.

Cas squeezes his hand and they walk into the kitchen.

Jess is taking a Dutch apple pie out of the oven, bless her soul. She looks up at Dean and her face lights up. She sets the pie on the stove and throws her arms around him. She then looks over at Cas, and if the sight of his wings surprises her, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she throws her arms around him in welcome, and Dean loves her so much right now.

Cas looks at Dean over the blond hair, and slowly wraps his arms around Jess.

“We’re very happy to meet you, Castiel,” she says brightly.

“Um. Please call me Cas.” He looks at Dean, and Dean senses his bewilderment at the hug from a stranger. It’s endearing, watching Cas’s surprised pleasure at being so easily accepted by Jess. 

Sam appears in the doorway. “Hey jerk,” he says to Dean, grinning, before wrapping him in a bear hug and pounding a hand on his back. He turns his attention to Cas and extends his hand. Cas looks at it hesitantly before reaching out his own and shaking Sam’s.

“So you’re the guy who stole my brother’s heart,” he says jovially.

“Oh my god, Sam, really?” Dean rolls his eyes.

*****

Supper is delicious, because Jess can do incredible things with chicken and even more incredible things with pie. After they finish eating and clean up the dishes, the four of them end up in the family room, eating popcorn, drinking beer and watching movies. (Watching _Deadpool_ with Cas has to be one of the greatest experiences of Dean’s life – His alternating expressions between confusion, horror, and god help him, _approval_ , were as entertaining as the movie, and that’s saying something).

After the movies are over, Jess shyly starts asking Cas about the places he’s been to. Her genuine interest and friendliness get Cas talking easily. Sam smirks at Dean, who is sitting shoulder to shoulder with Cas, hand on his leg and wing wrapped casually around him (as if Jess isn’t practically sitting in his _lap_ ). 

Dean rolls his eyes.

“This is so exciting!” Jess says enthusiastically, looking between the two of them. “Tell us about the places you’ve taken Dean!”

Dean looks at Cas, whose eyes are as round as quarters. He is obviously thinking of the planet with the unpronounceable name, and Dean grins at him evilly.

Sam catches on quickly and makes a strangled noise. “God no. Don’t tell us about _those_ places.”

“Why not?” Dean asks cheerfully. “Don’t you want to know about our stellar sex?– well, interstellar, really -”

“Stop right there, Dean, or I swear to god-”

Dean wiggles his eyebrows, then throws a handful of popcorn at his (foolishly unsuspecting) brother. It lands in his hair. It was inevitable from that moment on that food began to fly.

Jess and Cas sit looking bewildered as Sam and Dean unceremoniously fling popcorn at each other, but they remain uninvolved . . . until popcorn lands in Cas’ wings. Dean’s eyebrows shoot up as Cas frowns, shaking out his wings. His eyes are drawn to the way the feathers twitch and the long, soft fingers that reach out to remove the offending popcorn. Dean finds this adorable, so he adds to the mayhem by dropping popcorn onto Cas’ left wing as he’s focused on removing popcorn from the right one.

Cas turns sharply to look at Dean, who manages to look away and innocently study the ceiling. Sam snickers and Jess lands an elbow in his side, causing Sam to wince in pain.

Cas’s left wing is still wrapped around Dean, and he can’t reach the popcorn stuck in the feathers.

“Dean. This isn’t funny.”

“Yeah, Cas it kind of is.”

Cas tries to wiggle his wing out from behind Dean, but Dean leans back, pushing it flat against the couch cushions. Cas tries to reach around Dean, but Dean puts a hand on his shoulder and shoves him back.

“Dean! It _itches_!”

“Guys, there isn’t any more popcorn,” Jess says, and Dean thinks he hears a hint of regret in her voice. He looks up to see Sam filming them with his phone.

Asshole.

“Is this how family gatherings normally work?” Cas asks, disgruntled, as Dean finally releases his wing out of pity.

“Of course not,” Sam says, at the same time Dean says, “absolutely!”

Cas roughly moves Dean aside and clears the popcorn from his wing.

“Gatherings in this family rarely end without food fights,” Jess laments. “Your boyfriend and my husband are children in adult bodies.”

“I will be prepared for the next food fight,” Cas announces definitively, before uncertainty clouds his face. “That is, assuming Dean wishes for me to come with him again.”

“Don’t worry, Cas.” Dean grins. “I’ll need you on my team at Christmas. We sword fight with the turkey legs.”


End file.
